Rana Mitter is a leading historian whose research focuses on the impact of Japan’s invasion of China during the second world war on the development of Chinese politics, society and culture. He is S.T. Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and previously taught at Oxford University on the politics of modern China. He was also director of Oxford’s China Centre.
World War II is one of the most important factors in the shaping of modern China, but it’s often underestimated, both in China and the West.
The infrastructure and the communications built in the 1920s and 1930s were largely smashed into pieces, so that was a huge influence in terms of having to start again after the war.