Repairing the past: Chinese grassroots memory actors and the restoration and expansion of the Cemetery for Aviation Martyrs in Nanjing

Abstract

Recent scholarship has increasingly shifted away from interpreting China’s commemorations of World War II solely as state-driven nationalist projects. Instead, researchers have begun examining the narratives promoted by non-state actors and debating the extent to which these challenged official narratives. Contributing to this developing scholarship, this article explores the important role grassroots memory actors play in shaping the politics and poetics of Chinese war commemoration. It focuses on the activities of a group of Chinese World War II aviation veterans and their families, as well as the families of fallen Chinese airmen, who all had weak voices in China’s politics. I use the term “grassroots memory actors,” instead of the more frequently found “memory activists,” to better grasp the situatedness of such individuals in an illiberal authoritarian political environment and to avoid endowing them with a “progressive bias.” This article demonstrates that from the early 1980s to the 2000s, these grassroots memory actors strategically negotiated with the Chinese state and successfully restored and expanded the Cemetery for Aviation Martyrs, fighting for greater recognition of the airmen of the Republic of China Air Force who fought against Japan during World War II.