Abstract In 2024 it is abundantly clear that the end of the Cold War failed to produce either the “end of history” or the end of World War II's long shadow. Recent scholarship on World War II has engaged in exciting new ways with “meta-memory” and public debates about the war's frameworks, timeline, and overall legacy. However, few studies have examined how and why the People's Republic of China chose in 2017 to officially shift the war's duration from eight to fourteen years. This article argues that Northeastern Chinese scholars had a sizeable impact in shifting the war timeline through the “date debate,” a vigorous scholarly discussion from the 1980s through 2017 regarding when the war should be thought to have truly started. The shift of the war timeline was beneficial both for Northeasterners and for the national government, which has been able to capitalize on this for both increased domestic and international legitimacy.
Emily Matson (Wed,) studied this question.