The Internationalization of Museums of the Chinese War of Resistance in the Xi Era: China as a “Guarantor of Peace” and “Rescuer of Jews”

Abstract When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, memory politics surrounding the Second World War, just as the People's Republic of China (PRC) itself, began to undergo a radical transformation. The article focuses on a key pillar of this paradigm shift in the official historical narrative promoted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), namely, its “internationalization.” Whereas previously the official CCP-promoted historical reading of the Second World War focused on domestic resistance against Japanese aggression, in the “Xi Jinping Era,” the conflict discursively positions China in the role of a key and decisive actor of the “World Anti-Fascist War.” By focusing on two major state-run memorial museums in China—the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders—the article unpacks key aspects of the shift toward internationalization by addressing China's rebranding of its historical role as one of the victorious Allies of the Second World War, instrumentalization of Holocaust history through a newly enforced emphasis on Shanghai as a wartime refuge, and engagement with transnational musealization strategies. Through a study of how these trends come into being in museum spaces, the article analyzes the internationalization of Second World War memory in the PRC as an inherent part of Xi Jinping's ambition to consolidate China as a global power, a leading member of the United Nations, and a moral force in the international community.