For decades, both Western and Chinese readers have known little about the truth of China's war with Japan in the Second World War (1937–1945). What really happened in that war? Were there events, the understanding of which could help us elucidate complicated currents in East Asia in the post war period? Any readers seeking the answers to these questions will be quickly drawn into Rana Mitter's China's War with Japan, 1937–1945.

Based on the facts and images extracted from the archives and documents, Mitter ingeniously combines a grand narrative with individual perspectives (e.g., Chinese political leaders and Chinese refugees in the war), which present the multi-fold aspects of the China's war with Japan. Mitter's arguments serve as a firm reminder that China was “the first and most consistent foe of Axis aggression” (p. 244), but acted “as if it were a first-rank ally while being treated as a third-rank one” (p. 316). In the immediate post-war years, Chinese's wartime sacrifices were finally acknowledged by international society. As a result, China became one of the five permanent states on the Security Council of the United Nations. As Mitter suggests, contemporary China should be regarded as “the product of the war against Japan”. (p.11)

This well-researched book has 19 chapters, a prologue, and an epilogue. The chapters are arranged in four thematic parts. Part I (Chapters 1–3) overviews China's international and domestic situation, and Sino-Japanese relations before the outbreak of the China's war with Japan. The following chapters (4–9) explain the preliminary stage of the war, from Japan's invasion into China in the early 1930s to the fall of Wuhan in October 1938. Next, Chapters 10–12 focus on the three years between the fall of Wuhan and Pearl Harbour at the end of 1941. In the final part (Chapters13–19), Mitter stresses that there were three challenges facing Chiang Kai-shek's regime which finally led to the fall of Chiang's regime in 1949, the Japanese attack, domestic displacement and unreliable allies.

The most significant attribute of this book is the impartiality which Mitter displays while analyzing the controversial issues in China's war with Japan. First his appraisal of the reasons why the history of China's war with Japan has been wrapped in neglect for decades, in the words of Mitter, the root cause lies in “a toxic politics for which both the West and the Chinese themselves (on both sides of the Taiwan Strait) were responsible”. (p.11) For instance, during the Cold War, when the West showed little concern about the history of the war, China “reversed most of the key parts of its narratives about the war years”. (p.12)

Mitter does not avoid the dark sides of human behaviour in the war. He seriously condemned the warring parties gaining strategic advantage at the expense of human lives. On one hand, he describes the Japanese troops’ massacre at Nanjing which killed 300,000 Chinese as “inexcusable”. (p.137) On the other hand, he also criticises the consensus shared among the leading officials in the Nationalist government in China, which regards “the lives of individuals as expendable” (p.157). The most notorious example is Chiang's order to blow up the Yellow River's dykes in central Henan province, in a desperate attempt to contain the Japanese troops, which claimed lives of 500,000 Chinese.

In Mitter's opinion, Britain held a pragmatic attitude towards China in her war against Japan. So it's not surprising that British's attitude toward China “veered between affable detachment and contempt”. (p.244) In contrast, Japan took an active part in advocating the ideology of pan-Asianism, while fuelling the strategy of division that “China was not one entity, but a patchwork of regimes”. (p.96) Following this strategy, Japan established a series of client regimes in China, such as the Nanjing Regime of Wang Jingwei.

The United States maintained a more open attitude toward China but, as Mitter argues, there was an essential misconception that “the Chinese aspired to become like Americans, and that it was the job of the Americans to train them to achieve that goal” (p.43). For instance, the political leaders (i.e., Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong and Wang Jingwei), did not seek to establish what the United States would regard as a democracy.

In fact, the three political leaders successively took the ideas from the legacy of Dr Sun Yat-sen's ‘Three People's Principles’ of nationalism, democracy and livelihood for the people. Chiang advocated these principles, without defining or developing those principles; while in contrast, Mao Zedong re-wrote the principles. In Mao's well-known article entitled ‘On New Democracy’, he proposed a ‘New Three People's Principles’, that is, cooperating with the Soviet Union, the international Communist Party and assisting peasants and workers. Wang Jingwei however used Dr Sun's notion of pan-Asianism, to argue that “collaboration with Japan was in fact a version of the nationalist project that Sun had pursued.” (p. 229)

From a comparative perspective, Mitter contextualises the scenarios in which Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei took different responses to the war, and reveals a more complex truth. Though Chiang has always been criticised for his military thinking in the war, he was “repeatedly forced to deploy his troops in ways that served Allied geostrategic interests but undermined China's own aims” (pp. 13–14). Ironically all the stakeholders realised that “if Chiang was killed, there was nobody else of his status to rule China” (p. 65).

Wang Jingwei lacked sufficient standing to lead. He had served as “second in command” to Dr Sun, and then believed himself to be the legal heir to Dr Sun Yat-sen. (p. 7) As Mitter perspicaciously reveals, Wang's obvious deficiency was “his lack of military support”. (p. 218) Due to this deficiency, Japan held Wang in reserve, rather than taking him seriously. (p. 218) In contrast, Chiang Kai-shek was able to mobilise 4 million troops to fight against half a million Japanese troops. At the same time, Mao Zedong led a guerrilla war to prevent Japan from controlling large parts of northern China.

On the whole, China's War with Japan, 1937–1945 deserves all of the acclaims it has earned. It provides extremely valuable insights to scholars and students interested in the China's war with Japan (1937–1945), and represents a significant advancement in the literature of the history and politics of modern China. It is an ideal textbook for classes devoted to the studies of modern China. For general readers, no previous knowledge of modern China is required. It deserves a place in serious libraries around the world for many years to come.