Description
Against the background of rising geopolitical tensions, IR scholarship has increasingly examined the role of history and historical learning in contemporary politics. Existing literature on memory in China largely centres on nationalist sentiments tied to the pre-Communist era, such as the “Century of Humiliation” and its contemporary politicization by the Chinese Communist Party. As a consequence, it is ill-equipped to make sense of the recent rise of Cold War analogies globally and their effects on Chinese foreign policy. By contrast, this paper examines the role of the (old and new) Cold War and its memory in China. To do so, the article examines how the memory of the Cold War era is employed within contemporary Chinese elite discourse, drawing on content analysis of Chinese and English language sources. The article finds that the Cold War is mobilized in Chinese discourse in two opposing ways, (1) as a historical period offering important lessons for contemporary great-power competition especially in terms of the Soviet Union’s decline; and (2) as a misleading and politicized analogy of U.S.-China relations which undergird a “Cold War mentality” deemed detrimental to Chinese interests. The findings suggest complex and contradictory uses of the past in contemporary China as the leadership needs to navigate its foreign policy in an era of strategic competition.
