Between Patriots and Refugees: Negotiating Displacement With the State in (Post-)Second World War China

This article examines how non-elite Chinese navigated displacement in relation to the state during the decades of war and revolution in the 1930s and 1940s. The conflicts, including the Sino–Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, created displacement and complicated identities. This article reveals the diversity of wartime identities, beyond the well-studied identification with the nation and native place. It highlights the reinvention of ‘righteous people’ as a survival tactic to exploit the discourse of nationalism and the complexity of ‘refugees’ not just as a social category or status, but one of the identities people with little social capital strategically rejected or exploited to navigate displacement. In these and other ways, this study complicates the image of non-elite displaced Chinese. They were more than passive recipients of humanitarian aid or resilient survivors that cared little about politics, but were skilful in engaging with political identities for functional purposes.