In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, youth emerged as a new and important social force in many parts of the world. In China the image of this new youth imprinted itself on Chinese consciousness and made clear to potential national leaders that future governments would not be able to ignore China’s youth or expect them simply to step in line. For this and other reasons, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Chinese Nationalist Party (GMD) and a string of War of Resistance-era collaborationist governments all formed youth organizations in an effort to win youth over and harness their vitality and enthusiasm to further their agendas. Mobilizing Shanghai Youth explores the similarities and differences among three youth organizations that were connected to Chinese political parties or governments in Shanghai, spanning from the beginning of the May Fourth Movement, just as youth began to emerge as a powerful social and political force in China, to World War II, when Nationalist, Communist and Japanese forces were still competing for dominance. It takes a comparative approach in exploring the similarities and differences, trials and tribulations in how the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese Nationalist Party and a series of collaborationist regimes sought to appeal to youth through the Communist Youth League, the Three People’s Principles Youth Corps and the China Youth Corps. Focusing on Greater Shanghai allows a detailed exploration of the rise and fall of the original Communist Youth League and its connections to international communism. The spotlight on Shanghai also yields the extraordinary finding that the Three People’s Principles Youth Corps was a valuable asset to the Nationalist Party, operating as a potent resistance organization in Japanese-controlled Shanghai whereas branches in Nationalist-controlled territory were factionalized, dysfunctional and a terrible liability for the Party. Most surprisingly, the collaborationist China Youth Corps took the most practical and in some ways the most successful approach to mobilizing China’s youth. The result of exhaustive archival research, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Chinese history, modern history, Communism and the role of youth in revolution.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, youth emerged as a new and important social force in many parts of the world. In China the image of this new youth imprinted itself on Chinese consciousness and made clear to potential national leaders that future governments would not be able to ignore China’s youth or expect them simply to step in line. For this and other reasons, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Chinese Nationalist Party (GMD) and a string of War of Resistance-era collaborationist governments all formed youth organizations in an effort to win youth over and harness their vitality and enthusiasm to further their agendas. Mobilizing Shanghai Youth explores the similarities and differences among three youth organizations that were connected to Chinese political parties or governments in Shanghai, spanning from the beginning of the May Fourth Movement, just as youth began to emerge as a powerful social and political force in China, to World War II, when Nationalist, Communist and Japanese forces were still competing for dominance. It takes a comparative approach in exploring the similarities and differences, trials and tribulations in how the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese Nationalist Party and a series of collaborationist regimes sought to appeal to youth through the Communist Youth League, the Three People’s Principles Youth Corps and the China Youth Corps. Focusing on Greater Shanghai allows a detailed exploration of the rise and fall of the original Communist Youth League and its connections to international communism. The spotlight on Shanghai also yields the extraordinary finding that the Three People’s Principles Youth Corps was a valuable asset to the Nationalist Party, operating as a potent resistance organization in Japanese-controlled Shanghai whereas branches in Nationalist-controlled territory were factionalized, dysfunctional and a terrible liability for the Party. Most surprisingly, the collaborationist China Youth Corps took the most practical and in some ways the most successful approach to mobilizing China’s youth. The result of exhaustive archival research, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Chinese history, modern history, Communism and the role of youth in revolution.

This history of China's sent-down youth movement uses archival research to revise popular notions about power dynamics during the Cultural Revolution.

Indoctrinating the Youth examines how the Guomindang (GMD or Nationalists) sought to maintain control of middle-school students and cultivate their political loyalty over the trajectory of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War, and postwar Taiwan. During the Sino-Japanese War the Nationalists managed middle-school refugee students by merging schools, publishing and distributing updated textbooks, and assisting students as they migrated to the interior with their principals and teachers. In Taiwan, the China Youth Corps (CYC) became a symbol of the regime’s successful establishment. Tracing Nationalist efforts to indoctrinate ideology and martial spirit, Jennifer Liu investigates how GMD leaders Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo tried to build support among young people in their efforts to stabilize Taiwanese society under their rule. By comparing two key youth organizations—the Three People’s Principles Youth Corps in China, and the CYC on Taiwan—Liu uses education as a lens to analyze state-building in modern China. Liu’s careful analysis of the inner workings of GMD youth organizations also illuminates the day-to-day operations of military training in gender-segregated upper-middle schools—including how the government selected instructors and the skills taught to students. According to Liu, mandatory military training contributed to preventing major protest against the government but the policy was not without critics. Intellectuals, parents, and students voiced their dissent at what they perceived as excessive control by a repressive government and a waste of resources interfering with academics. The government-mandated civics curriculum, including government-approved textbooks and standards, reveals the characteristics and duties GMD officials believed modern citizens of the next generation should possess. Through provisions for refugee students, youth organizations, military training, and civics classes, GMD secondary education policy played a critical role in the process of state building in both modern China and Taiwan. Skillfully combining archival work in Nanjing and Taipei, along with oral interviews with former students and CYC administrators, instructors, and members, Liu offers a unique perspective toward a balanced assessment of Nationalist Party rule.

The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) is best known for its athletic and youth programs, a heritage that draws on its origins in 1844 to provide wholesome recreation to urban youth away from the moral decay of industrialized urban living. Before long, that uplift mission found a place in the American Civil War, and soon the Y had spread all over the world by the early twentieth century, and in every major war thereafter as well. The YMCA at War: Collaboration and Conflict during the World Wars is the first collection of scholarship to examine the YMCA’s efforts during the World Wars of the twentieth century, which proved to be a bastion of support to soldiers and civilians around the world. The YMCA deployed hundreds of thousands of its much-vaunted secretaries to support suffering civilians and ease soldiers’ wartime hardships. Joining forces with governments, other civic organizations, and individuals, the Y could be either an indispensable auxiliary or an arms-length nuisance. In all cases, its support had a significant byproduct: for every person it befriended, the Y invariably made an enemy with an opposing party, its patrons, its sponsor, or at times, all three. The YMCA at War offers fresh, timely research in an international and comparative perspective from scholars around the world that evaluates this conflict and collaboration during the World Wars.

This pathbreaking study offers the first in-depth view of the urban revolution during the pivotal Nanjing Decade. Focusing on China's largest and most cosmopolitan city, Stranahan examines how the Party organization in Shanghai-severed from the central leadership and pursued by Guomindang and foreign authorities alike-survived through a flexible organizing strategy attuned to the changing local environment.

Acclaimed historian Stephen Robinson brings to life a legendary last stand. Shanghai 1937. With invading Japanese troops poised to capture one of the world’s greatest cities after almost three months of brutal urban warfare, the Chinese Army begins to retreat – except for a single battalion that stays behind to fight. These soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Xie Jinyuan, known as the ‘Eight Hundred Heroes’, defended Sihang Warehouse – a six-storey concrete building and natural fortress. The men repulsed waves of Japanese attacks with intense bravery as thousands of spectators looked on from the relative safety of the British Concession inside Shanghai’s International Settlement. Western journalists with front row seats to the spectacle spread the story across the globe as the plight of the heroes captured the sympathy of the world. Their valour raised Chinese morale as did the actions of the heroine Yang Huimin, a Girl Guide who delivered a Chinese flag to the defenders that flew over Sihang Warehouse as a beacon of hope. Eight Hundred Heroes is an in-depth account, resulting from extensive research that for the first time comprehensively utilises first-hand accounts of the Chinese participants and the observations of westerners who witnessed the battle at close range. It also explains how this incredible feat of heroism became an enduring myth that helped define modern China.