China’s War with Japan, by Rana Mitter – review

The Sino-Japanese struggle that began in 1937, two years before the rest of the world plunged into war, is not as unknown as Rana Mitter, a professor of Chinese history and politics at Oxford, contends in this comprehensive new book. His copious notes, after all, display how well that conflict has been studied by many scholars. But in the sense that few Westerners under the age of 80 can string more than two sentences together about those terrible eight years, he is right.

It is a big story, and for the most part Mitter tells it well. The scene — China — is vast. Two competing leaders, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, dominate it. In the wings are Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill who, once the war began for them in the Soviet Union, the Pacific and Europe, brought China on to the international stage — just enough to keep Japan at bay on the Asian mainland — but treated Chiang Kai-shek’s regime like a third-rate power.