How World War II Changed China (2024)

World War II was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world from 1939 to 1945.

The clash was between the Axis powers, which primarily included Germany, Italy, and Japan, and the Allied powers, which included Great Britain, France, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China.
It was the bloodiest conflict—and largest war—in military history.
According to some estimates, China suffered 14 million casualties during World War II, a number included in the approximately 35 million Chinese people who were killed or wounded during over a decade of Japanese occupation.
Out of the thousands of Chinese who were captured, mostly by the Japanese army, and became prisoners of war, only 56 were found alive after the war ended.
World War II ended in the Pacific in September 1945, after the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki pushed Japan out of the war.
And while the Japanese forces were pushed out of China, the end of World War II didn’t mean immediate peace.
A conflict that had been brewing in China since the 1920s, prior to Japanese occupation, erupted into full-scale civil war.
Tensions between the Chinese Nationalists and the Chinese Communist Party resulted in a war that lasted until 1949, when Mao Zedong declared a Communist victory and established the People’s Republic of China, with himself as chairman.
Foreigners were expelled from the country as the national government consolidated its control, and efforts to completely change traditional Chinese culture were launched as China began the process of putting itself back together after two brutal conflicts.