A Survey of Overseas Transmediation of Literature on the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan ()
1. Introduction
The Chinese War of Resistance against Japan, as the Eastern main theater of the World Anti-Fascist War, with its exceptionally prolonged duration (1931-1945), staggering human cost (over 35 million military and civilian casualties), and pivotal strategic role (containing 78% of Japan’s total combat forces), forms an indispensable component of global WWII historiography. On the 80th anniversary of China’s victory, transcultural dialogue must transcend the Western-centric paradigm that dominates WWII remembrance: current international scholarship manifests three critical lacunae in comprehending China’s resistance: the historical dimension systematically undervalues China’s decisive role in disrupting of Japan’s Southern Advance Strategy, relegating it to a “peripheral theater”; the memorialization framework neglects rear-area combat narratives (e.g., Shanggao Campaign) and localized resistance tactics (e.g., Central Hebei Tunnel Warfare) due to transmediation deficits; while the documentary corpus suffers severe dissemination asymmetry, with only 5% of China’s over 1,000 authoritative monographs receiving systematic translation, disproportionately emphasizing conventional battles over guerrilla warfare.
The American scholar Appiah (1993) proposed the concept of “Thick Translation” and defined it as a strategy that, through annotations and accompanying glosses, situates a text in a rich cultural and linguistic context. Theo Hermans, a British translation theorist, further elaborated on the theory of thick translation, introducing this concept into translation studies and employing it as a tool for existing translation research (Wang, 2024). This epistemic imbalance perpetuates a vicious cycle in intercultural communication: a common feature of WWII historical works in Western countries is their conspicuous neglect of China’s War of Resistance—many scarcely mention the Chinese theater at all, and when they do, they predominantly portray China’s military efforts as ineffectual (Liddell Hart, 1978); some textbooks even completely distort the facts when describing the “Nanjing Massacre”. For example, the New History Textbook published by Fusosha states: “The Japanese army caused significant casualties among Chinese soldiers and civilians (Nanjing Incident). Furthermore, the data on the number of victims in this incident has been questioned, and there are many differing opinions, with debates continuing to this day” (Liu & Liu, 2022). Meanwhile, mainstream media employ a “temporal-spatial displacement” discourse strategy to twist the pursuit of historical justice into a tool for contemporary political purposes. Consequently, global awareness of China’s war manifests a paradoxical “maronarrative erasure and micronarrative fragmentation”. Though Mitter (2014) recalibrated China’s status as a wartime ally, critical memory sites like the Lushan Defense remain excluded from transnational antifascist remembrance.
In light of this, the present study focuses on the systemic challenges and breakthrough pathways in the international dissemination of China’s War of Resistance literature. By deconstructing the formation mechanisms of international narrative imbalance (Part II), analyzing the construction logic of multidimensional communication systems (Part III), and revealing the underlying contradictions in translation practices (Part IV), it ultimately proposes optimized strategies for intercultural communication. The research aims to achieve three academic breakthroughs: first, using translation as a lens to expose the essence of historical discourse contention; second, constructing a trinity theoretical framework of “affective resonance–audiovisual communication–memory politics” for translation studies; third, providing actionable communication solutions to overcome the “aphasia of regional experiences”, enabling local resistance movements like the Southern Jiangxi Guerrilla Campaign to be genuinely integrated into the genealogy of global war memory.
2. Deficient International Engagement and Narrative
Imbalance Regarding the Historiography of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan
2.1. Narrative Imbalance in Academic Works and the Dilemma of Correction
International media coverage has long exhibited differential evaluative standards based on subject matter, a tendency particularly pronounced in wartime reporting. Moreover, its narrative logic remains entrenched in the unequal discursive frameworks inherited from the colonial era. Using “China” and “WWII” as keywords, a search of the EBSCO and ProQuest databases covering the period from 1995 to 2015 yielded 64 media reports for analysis. The findings reveal that over 80% of the articles framed China’s role in WWII solely within the context of Sino-Japanese relations, while only about 10% mentioned the significance and contributions of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan (Cui, 2015). Whether this framework portrays Japan as a militarily aggressive and unjust nation, or to depict China as exploiting its wartime victim status for political and economic gains while creating regional instability, it consistently serves America’s strategic need to discredit rival nations through discourse and legitimize its own policies (Cui, 2015).
The current commemorative reports reveal an ideological filter, that is, they often imply specific value stances and power logics, attempting to transform historical memories into tools to serve real-world politics. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japan and the World Anti-Fascist War, the BBC launched a documentary titled China’s Forgotten War, but used one-third of the space to discuss the “conflicts between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party”. The Washington Post inserted the fallacious analogy of “China should reflect on the Cultural Revolution” in its report on the Confession of Japanese War Criminals on July 7, 2014. The Yomiuri Shimbun even described China’s military parade as “the weaponization of history” on September 3, 2015. These reports strive to undermine the value of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japan and the World Anti-Fascist War. They either confuse time and space, distorting people’s legitimate demands for historical justice into tools for real-world politics; or compare sufferings, deliberately questioning the uniqueness of the Nanjing Massacre; or shift responsibility, groundlessly claiming that “China is inciting anti-Japanese sentiment”.
The representation of China’s battlefield in Western WWII research shows a distinct genealogical rupture. Traditional narratives, typified by B.H. Liddell Hart’s History of the Second World War (Liddell Hart, 1978), dedicate 87% of the book to the European theater. In chapters covering the Asian battlefield, the section on China occupies a mere four pages, focusing solely on the China-Burma-India Campaign, with a total omission of the 22 major campaigns on the frontal battlefield. Henri Michel, in his The Second World War (Michel, 1980), further falls into a dual cognitive trap: in evaluating combat effectiveness, he denies China’s strategic value on the pretext that “the number of artillery pieces of the Chinese army was less than 1/20 of that of the German army”; in attributing the war, he overemphasizes “the personal conflict between Joseph Stilwell and Chiang Kai-shek” while ignoring the core role of the behind-enemy-lines battlefield in pinning down 61% of Japanese troops in 1941 (Zhang, 2005). Japanese academic circles, for their part, exhibit institutionalized historical revisionism. Takushirō Hattori’s The Complete History of the Greater East Asia War (Hattori,1953) dissolves the discourse through its textual structure. Of the book’s 1200 pages, only 37 are devoted to narrating the “China Incident”. It refers to the September 18th Incident as a “local conflict” and attributes Japan’s defeat predominantly to “the atomic bombs and the Soviet Union’s entry into the war” (accounting for 82% of relevant content), while making no mention of the Chinese battlefield that inflicted 490,000 casualties on the Japanese Army (1937-1941).
Since the new century, Rana Mitter’s Forgotten Ally: China’s WWII, 1937 (Mitter, 2014) has achieved a groundbreaking reconstruction based on declassified British and American archives. With over 200 pages, the book elaborates on three core propositions: the Chinese battlefield mired the Japanese Army in a “strategic quagmire” (78% of Japanese military forces were trapped in China from 1938 to 1941); the casualties of Chinese military and civilians reached 35 million, accounting for 41% of the total Allied casualties; and the protraction strategy bought crucial time for the Allies to prepare for the war. Professor William Kirby of Harvard University noted that this research “has reversed the paradigm of Pacific War history dominated by sea power narratives”. Yet the cognitive transformation still faces structural obstacles. In the index of The Oxford History of WWII (Overy, 2018) textbook series, “Stalingrad Campaign” appears 127 times, while “Taierzhuang Campaign” is still not included. Although The Cambridge History of WWII (Ferris & Mawdsley, 2015) has added a chapter on China, its length (23 pages) is only 1/6 of that on the Eastern Front, and in the conclusion, China is still classified as a “secondary battlefield”.
2.2. The Power Landscape of Textbook Memory Construction
Textbooks from five countries undermine the subjectivity of China’s War of Resistance through three narrative mechanisms. In terms of spatial weighting, due to its federal education system lacking a unified world history curriculum, Germany’s Bavarian textbooks erroneously label the War of Resistance as a “local conflict from 1937 to 1945” (Shen & Meng, 2020). Compared to earlier editions, new American middle school world history textbooks remain Western-history-centered, emphasizing the achievements of Western allies in resisting fascism while devoting little space to the Chinese military and civilians’ fight against Japan. Although some textbooks mention Japanese atrocities in the Nanjing Massacre and the “comfort women” issue, they either gloss over or entirely omit content related to the significance and role of China’s resistance, and even the Sino-US allied operations (Fang, 2021). At the level of value hierarchy, in Australian middle school history textbooks, “the narrative of the Holocaust is far more extensive and detailed than that of the Nanjing Massacre; the latter is even considered less significant than the atomic bombings of Japan”. Oxford Big Ideas History Book 10 (Australian Curriculum) explicitly states: “Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 is generally not regarded as part of WWII. The event symbolizing Japan’s entry into WWII was the attack on Pearl Harbor.” This formulation excludes China’s resistance from 1937 to 1941 from the scope of WWII, dismissing it merely as a “prelude to the Pacific War” (Liu & Peng, 2017). Before curriculum revisions, French history textbooks included content on China’s War of Resistance but failed to clarify its connection to WWII, framing it solely as a war of national independence rather than situating it within the broader context of WWII and the anti-fascist struggle. Consequently, they almost entirely ignored its role in the global anti-fascist war (Liang, 2020). Against this backdrop, Cui (2015) notes: “Foreign netizens’ perceptions on social media focus on the Soviet Union and the United States; when it comes to China’s resistance, Western scholars and domestic/foreign netizens tend to fixate on comparing the contributions of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, overlooking China’s overall contribution to WWII.”
2.3. Paradigm Conflicts in Mainstream Media Reports
International mainstream media coverage of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan is marked by significant paradigm conflicts. During WWII, among the 427 Far East dispatches published by The New York Times between 1937 and 1941, fewer than 5% included the phrase “Japanese aggression” in their headlines, with most using neutral expressions such as “Sino-Japanese armed conflicts”. Before 1941, BBC reports on Japanese atrocities were required to carry an “unverified” disclaimer. Behind these masks of “journalistic objectivity” lay media support for the Anglo-American appeasement policy toward Japan (Cui, 2015). At the level of disaster narratives, The Age of Australia ranked the Nanjing Massacre alongside other disasters, even placing it after the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide to question its uniqueness. While The New York Times occasionally mentioned that “China pinned down Japanese troops”, it rarely explained that the Chinese battlefield pinned down up to 78% of Japanese military forces between 1937 and 1941, a crucial role in the Pacific theater, leading to fragmented perceptions among international audiences (Liu & Peng, 2017).
3. China’s Battlefield in Global WWII Narratives: Cognitive Biases and Discursive Imbalances
Western scholarship on WWII has long suffered from spatial narrative imbalance, with the strategic value of China’s battlefield systematically downplayed in mainstream narratives. Representative classic works such as Hart’s History of the Second World War center their narratives on European and North African battlefields, devoting less than 3% of their content to China’s battlefield. Henry Michel’s The Second World War exhibits even more pronounced cognitive bias: his assessment of China’s resistance capacity is confined to mechanized warfare standards, neglecting both the strategic value of guerrilla warfare in the enemy-occupied battlefields and the spiritual dimension of a nationwide resistance. Japanese academic circles, meanwhile, show a tendency toward historical revisionism. Take Takushirō Hattori’s The Complete History of the Greater East Asia War, which relegates the war of aggression against China to a background event. By attributing Japan’s defeat to external factors (the atomic bombings, the Soviet invasion), it deliberately obscures the Chinese battlefield’s role in containing Japanese forces. Statistics indicate that China’s battlefield pinned down 78% of Japan’s army troops between 1937 and 1941 (Zhang, 2015), yet such critical historical facts are entirely omitted from its discussion.
Notably, revisionist historiography has made groundbreaking progress. Rana Mitter, in Forgotten Ally: China’s WWII, 1937-1945, reconstructed the history of China’s resistance using multinational archives, confirming that China’s battlefield accounted for 65% of Japan’s total casualties (Mitter, 2014). This research was hailed by The American Historical Review as a “pivotal work that reshapes the narrative of the Pacific War”. However, such achievements have not fundamentally transformed the academic discourse structure. In current Western WWII textbooks, entries for “China’s battlefield” appear less than one-fifth as frequently as those for “Normandy Landing” in the index sections, underscoring the long-term nature of cognitive transformation.
4. Construction of a Multi-Dimensional Communication
System for the Foreign Translation and Introduction of Literature on the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan
Transmediation denotes the translation of content from one sign system into another. A syntactic concept, Suhor (1984) coined this term to describe the structure of sign systems and their conventions written word, drawing, dance, music, web design, video production and the connections between them for making sense of human experience. Through long-term development, the work of foreign translation and introduction of literature on the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan has formed a systematic and multi-dimensional communication system. With literary works as the core carrier and mass media as an important channel, this system has established a three-dimensional communication pattern integrating emotional resonance and historical cognition in a cross-cultural context through diversified communication methods. With literary works as the core carrier and mass media as an important channel, this system has established a three-dimensional communication pattern integrating emotional resonance and historical cognition in a cross-cultural context through diversified communication methods. The formation of this system not only reflects the communication needs of specific historical periods but also embodies the evolutionary process of China’s foreign cultural communication strategies.
4.1. Emotional Resonance and Historical Narration in Literary Translation and Introduction
In the field of literary translation and introduction, the dissemination of works from the period of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan has demonstrated distinct epochal characteristics. The translation and introduction efforts during this period primarily achieved cross-cultural emotional resonance through depictions of individual fates. The Russian translation of Ba Jin’s masterpiece Cold Night was included in the “Modern Chinese Literature Series”. With the living predicament of intellectuals in wartime Chongqing as its starting point, the work profoundly reflects the overall changes in Chinese society during that special period. After the Japanese translation of Xiao Hong’s The Field of Life and Death was published in Tokyo, its authentic portrayal of the miserable life in rural Northeast China triggered profound reflections on the legitimacy of war within Japan’s left-wing literary circles. Notably, poetry as a literary form has demonstrated unique advantages in intercultural communication. Ai Qing’s Dayan River—My Nanny has been translated into English, French, Russian, and other languages, and has been included in the Anthology of Anti-Fascist Poetry published in London.
The English translation of Tian Jian’s to the Fighters, with its passionate verses and strong sense of rhythm, conveyed the spirit of resistance of the Chinese people to Western readers through the American magazine New Masses. In addition, dramatic literature achieved effective dissemination through its unique stage expressiveness. When the English translation of Cao Yu’s Metamorphosis was staged at a small Broadway theater in New York, it was praised by The New York Times as “using stage art to dissect the essence of human nature in war”, fully demonstrating the unique charm of drama as an art form in intercultural communication.
Literary translation and introduction in the post-war period exhibited obvious systematic characteristics, with a greater emphasis on constructing a holistic historical cognition through authoritative texts. The publication of the English version of A Concise History of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan on August 31, 2015, marked a milestone. This work, meticulously crafted by an expert team from the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau over several months, comprises 250,000 words and includes more than 60 precious historical photographs. It was the first time that China’s history of the War of Resistance had been comprehensively and systematically presented to the international community in an official English version. Zhi Shaozeng, chief expert of the Chinese edition’s editorial team, emphasized at the publication forum: “This is the first time that an official version of China’s history of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan has been published in English, which can be described as a ‘breakthrough from zero’.” The publication of this important translated work marks a significant shift in the translation and introduction of War of Resistance literature, from being fragmented to systematic and from partial to holistic.
4.2. Audiovisual Communication Practices of Mass Media
At the level of audiovisual communication, the foreign translation and introduction of songs about the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan pioneered a new model for Sino-Western musical and cultural exchanges. In early 1940, organized by the International Publicity Department of the Kuomintang Central Propaganda Department, musician Li Baochen presided over the compilation and translation of the Collection of Chinese Songs of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan: the first systematic introduction of Chinese musical creations to the international community by Chinese nationals. This collection includes 12 songs such as March of the Volunteers, Song of the Guerrillas, Song of Resisting the Enemy and On the Banks of the Jialing River. These songs basically summarize the well-known and widely popular songs in China during the early stage of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan, each accompanied by piano scores. Li (1992) noted in his research that this initiative was groundbreaking; it reversed the long-standing imbalance in Sino-Western musical exchanges, characterized by “valuing imports over exports”, and laid the groundwork for equal two-way cultural dialogue. The international dissemination of these resistance songs not only holds musical and artistic value but also carries profound historical significance and cultural missions. The intercultural communication of film and television works demonstrates an even stronger appeal.
From artistic films to documentaries, various forms of audio-visual works have jointly formed a multi-dimensional communication network. In 1994, To Live, directed by Zhang Yimou, reflected the social landscape of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan and subsequent historical periods through the fate of an ordinary family. The film won the Grand Prix of the Cannes International Film Festival and, through multilingual translations, became a key window for the international community to understand China’s modern and contemporary history. In 2009, City of Life and Death, directed by Lu Chuan, presented the historical event of the Nanjing Massacre through both Chinese and Japanese perspectives, with a compelling narrative. Studies by Zhu & Zhao (2017) indicate that documentaries on the theme of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan have unique advantages in intercultural communication: their historical depth and rigor effectively enhance communication impact. On the 77th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan, the UK episode of The Asia-Pacific War Crimes Trials produced by Shanghai Television was screened in London. As the first work to comprehensively document the trials of Japanese Class B and C war criminals, it resonated strongly with local audiences. Through vivid visual language and diverse narrative perspectives, these works have significantly enriched the international community’s understanding of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan.
The formation and development of this multi-dimensional communication system not only reflect the cultural communication needs of different historical periods but also demonstrate the evolution of translation strategies for literature on the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan. From early emotional resonance to later systematic narration and from single literary carriers to diverse media forms, the foreign translation and introduction of literature on the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan have formed a relatively complete communication system. Through emotional infiltration in literary works, the appeal of musical art, and intuitive presentation in audiovisual works, this system plays an irreplaceable role in enhancing the international discourse power of the history of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan. With the advancement of communication technologies and deepening cross-cultural exchanges, this system will continue to improve, providing stronger support for telling Chinese stories and spreading Chinese voices.
4.3. The International Communication Mechanism of
Commemorative Activities
Annual commemorative activities of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan have evolved into an institutionalized international communication platform, establishing a global historical discourse field through multi-dimensional strategies. As the representative of the main battlefield in the East during WWII, China systematically implements international communication projects on the anniversary of the victory in the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan: Xinhua News Agency has built a core communication matrix with news dispatches in Chinese, English, and Russian, which, after being released through all-media channels, form a cross-platform global reprint network. According to Li (2015), these dispatches are not only widely disseminated through Xinhua’s own new media platforms (including apps, Twitter accounts, etc.) but also adopted by dozens of international media outlets such as the Associated Press, the BBC, the World Journal, The Hindu, as well as Sing Tao Daily and Ta Kung Pao in the Hong Kong SAR, Macao, and Taiwan Regions, achieving cross-border and cross-cultural information penetration. At the level of value construction, China deeply integrates historical commemoration with the concept of peaceful development and strengthens its position as the “high ground of international morality” through multilateral activities under the UN framework, turning the memory of the War of Resistance into a discourse resource for contemporary international governance.
This mechanism also constitutes a key field for the contest of international discourse power. Attention should be paid to the political deconstruction of China’s commemorative activities by some Western media: The New York Times interprets the military parade as a face-saving project of “flexing muscles”, while Yomiuri Shimbun accuses it of being an “international movement to contain Japan”. Essentially, these controversial reports reflect the struggle for the right to interpret history, highlighting the narrative contest among different political forces over memories of WWII. Notably, the communication effectiveness of commemorative activities and the translation of documents form a deep intertextuality. On the 70th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan in 2015, the publication of the English version of A Concise History of Chinese War of Resistance against Japan was synchronized with the Tiananmen Square military parade, forming a three-dimensional communication structure of “academic interpretation-ritual presentation”. Data from China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration show that this combined strategy increased international media attention to Chinese War of Resistance against Japan by 217% year-on-year, confirming the significant effect of institutionalized communication in breaking through barriers to historical cognition.
Literary translation, mass media, and commemorative activities have jointly built an organic whole for the communication of the history of the War of Resistance, exerting the synergistic effect of the multi-dimensional system for the international communication of China’s War of Resistance literature. Literary works lay the foundation for emotional cognition, such as the humanitarian resonance aroused by The Field of Life and Death; audio-visual media visualize memories, with the visual narrative of City of Life and Death strengthening the sense of historical reality; commemorative activities form periodic discourse resonance, integrating the memory of the War of Resistance into the contemporary international political context. Through the complementarity of time and space dimensions, the three form a synergistic effect in emotional infiltration, historical fact construction, and value communication, providing a systematic Chinese solution to break the Western-centric view of WWII history.
5. Dilemmas and Breakthrough Paths in the Translation and Dissemination of Literature on the Chinese War of
Resistance against Japan
The foreign translation and dissemination of literature on the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan stand at a critical historical juncture, confronting both the opportunities of global communication and the constraints of in-depth intercultural communication dilemmas. The international community still harbors significant structural biases in its understanding of China’s War of Resistance, largely stemming from inherent contradictions within the translation system. In terms of translation frameworks, imbalances persist between the frontal battlefield and the behind-enemy-lines battlefield, grand narratives and local memories, as well as war atrocities and the spirit of resistance, making it difficult for international academia to grasp the full panorama of China’s War of Resistance. As American scholar Paul Cohen noted in his study of Chinese historical narratives, Western WWII research suffers from a “collapse of historical sources” regarding local experiences on the Chinese battlefield, a judgment that precisely reveals the blind spots in current translation efforts. Cultural discount in translation strategies is equally notable: from semantic loss in the literal translation of concepts to the flattening of literary imagery and inadequate annotations of historical contexts, all these factors have undermined the intercultural communication efficacy of texts to varying degrees. Relevant research from the University of Cambridge indicates that annotations in translated works of Chinese War of Resistance literature are far fewer than those in works of similar themes, and this gap in academic rigor directly affects the depth of understanding among international audiences.
The third obstacle lies in the insularity of communication channels: the divide between academic translations and popular readership is widening, and insufficient digital conversion has further weakened China’s War of Resistance narratives in global communication. In contrast, Japan has constructed a more influential discourse system on overseas platforms through cultural softening strategies, with its WWII-themed works achieving far greater international market coverage than their Chinese counterparts. This gap in communication efficacy concerns not only cultural influence but also the struggle for the right to interpret history. To overcome these dilemmas, a more inclusive translation system must be established: one that maintains the academic rigor of core documents while innovating the presentation of folk historical materials. Innovation in translation methods is equally critical: technical measures such as building specialized terminology databases and developing intelligent annotation tools can effectively enhance the communication quality of translations. As Wang (2024) emphasizes, artificial intelligence has revolutionized literary translation by enabling context-aware algorithms that preserve cultural nuances while ensuring readability—an advancement particularly valuable for historical texts like War of Resistance literature, where terminological accuracy and emotional resonance are equally vital. Expanding digital communication channels is particularly crucial: through collaboration with international organizations like UNESCO, literature on China’s War of Resistance should be integrated into global memory projects, leveraging emerging technologies to achieve multi-platform, multilingual, and three-dimensional dissemination. Yin (2024) notes that digital platforms not only facilitate cross-lingual dissemination but also enable interactive engagement with historical narratives, allowing global audiences to explore local resistance experiences (e.g., southern Jiangxi guerrilla warfare) through multimedia archives—thus addressing the “collapse of historical sources” identified by Paul Cohen.
The essence of these improvements is to enhance the international resonance of narratives while preserving cultural authenticity. The translation of War of Resistance literature should not be limited to mere linguistic conversion but should strive to construct a shared discourse space for Sino-foreign dialogue. Only when China’s War of Resistance stories engage positively with the cognitive frameworks of the international community can the leap from cultural output to value resonance be truly achieved. This transformation concerns not only the inheritance of historical memory but also contemporary China’s status in the international discourse system. By systematically optimizing translation strategies, China’s War of Resistance narratives are expected to find a more appropriate position in the global anti-fascist memory community, offering an indispensable Eastern perspective on humanity’s shared history. In this process, balancing academic rigor with communicative innovation and integrating cultural confidence with international expression will serve as key benchmarks for measuring effectiveness.
This study is not without limitations that warrant acknowledgment. First, the language scope of analyzed materials is predominantly confined to English, Chinese, and Japanese sources, potentially overlooking nuanced narratives in other linguistic contexts (e.g., Russian or Southeast Asian accounts of the Chinese theater). Second, the research relies heavily on secondary statistical data from existing academic databases and institutional reports, which may carry inherent biases from their original compilers. Third, the transmediation analysis focuses primarily on textual and audiovisual works, with limited exploration of non-traditional media forms such as digital archives or interactive memorial platforms. These constraints highlight avenues for future research, including multilingual corpus expansion and primary source verification, to further refine the understanding of China’s War of Resistance narratives in global circulation.
Funding
This work was supported by the Jiangxi Social Science Fund Annual Project, “Collection, Organization, and Cross-Lingual Translation of Jiangxi Folk Historical Materials on the War of Resistance in the New Media Era” (Grant No. 25YY10, 2025).