A ceremony was held on July 7 in Beijing to mark the 83rd anniversary of China’s whole-of-nation war of resistance against Japanese aggression.

On July 7, 1937, Japanese soldiers attacked Chinese forces at the Lugou Bridge, also known as the Marco Polo Bridge, marking the beginning of Japan’s full-scale invasion of China and the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese army on Chinese civilians.

The War of the Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was the prelude to the Pacific side of World War II.

Gao Shihua, a research fellow from the Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said that the warfare between the two countries was international in nature, as it was part of the Second World War.

Since the founding of the PRC in 1949, the academic community in China has focused its research on the CPC’s construction of anti-Japanese bases, how the CPC countered Japanese aggression, the atrocities of the Japanese army, the internal and foreign affairs of the National Government, the politics and economy of the region under control of the government, and how the Kuomintang (KMT) resisted the enemy directly in the battlefront.

Xu Chang, a professor from the School of History and Culture at Shandong University, said that in recent years, some issues have attracted increasing academic attention, such as wartime social mobilization by the KMT and the CPC, the social histories of the CPC’s anti-Japanese bases, China’s status in the world’s anti-fascist war, and investigations into the losses caused by the war.

Since the 1980s, with the increasing frequency of international academic exchanges, the international academic community has gradually paid more attention to China’s war of resistance against Japanese aggression, with some quality books published. Xu said that important research achievements in recent years include Clash of Empires in South China: The Allied Nations’ Proxy War with Japan, 1935–1941 by Franko David Macri and China’s War with Japan, 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival by Oxford Professor Rana Mitter, among others. These works fully affirm the status and significance of China’s war of resistance against Japanese aggression, expose the crimes of the Japanese invasion of China, and explore weak links in past research, thus enriching and enhancing research in this field.

In recent years, the country has invested a lot of manpower and material resources to support the publication of various archives concerning the war, said Zuo Shuangwen, a professor from the School of History and Culture at South China Normal University.

Zhang Lianhong, a professor of history at Nanjing Normal University, said that CASS’s Institute of Modern History led the launch of a literature and data platform concerning the war and China-Japan relations in modern times, which has won unanimous praise from the academic community. In addition, important achievements have been made in collating and publishing overseas archives and materials, such as the materials regarding the Tokyo War Crimes Trials and the Lytton Commission.

At present, research on the collation of the oral history of the war has received increasing attention from all walks of life. Zhang said that it will be difficult to fully reveal the history of the war without the support of oral history materials. Sorting out oral history materials can make up for the deficiencies of first-hand archives, while helping form a complete national memory. Recent years have seen major achievements in recording the oral history of the victims of Japanese atrocities, that of the veterans and that of certain special groups of people.

“In recent years, we have made progress in the fields of wartime politics, military, diplomacy, economy, ideology and culture, as well as the losses caused by the war. With the continuous publication of numerous new historical materials, research in these fields needs to be deepened,” said Zuo. In addition, much has yet to be done regarding wartime social life, wartime central-local relations, regional histories of the war, and wartime transportation and communication, which requires systematical and thorough research.

Xu suggested strengthening the collection and collation of historical materials and making full use of relevant archives and documents stored in other countries. It is necessary to study China’s war of resistance against Japanese aggression in the context of the world’s anti-fascist war and to understand the war from the perspective of global history.

Gao suggested further facilitating international exchanges and cooperation to broaden research scopes. Only by doing so can we help the world gain a deeper understanding of China’s important role in the Second World War.