War, memory, the state, and statelessness in China

Mitter’s chapter argues that we need to take account of special features of the Chinese state when studying its approach to statelessness and the plight of refugees. China’s nationalism is paradoxical. It draws on a seemingly very rigid definition of state identity precisely because it fears that the underpinnings of the modern Chinese state are dangerously fluid and less able to bear the load of national identity formation than the task demands. It can seem that the Chinese state is not so much worried that people might become stateless, but that the state itself might do so. Full sovereignty and communist rule were born together after 20 years of war. How that war has been commemorated has changed over time. Only recently has the nationalist contribution to victory been made visible in public commemoration and public art. In this way a state still unsure of itself shows its people that there is an ‘imagined community’ that together won the war. Redefining the ‘imagined community’ in wartime was a major change in state policy. It reversed the initial decision to render the nationalist population ‘stateless’, in the sense of being exiled to Taiwan and invisible in public commemoration. After Mao, coming to terms with the war against Japan meant slowly but surely reintegrating the non-communist war effort into the overall narrative of resistance, suffering, and victory. Those outside the state narrative have finally come home.