Rana Mitter

Rana Mitter is a professor of the history and politics of modern China at the University of Oxford, a fellow of St Cross College, and one of the most prominent scholars of modern Chinese history writing in English today. His book China's Good War examines how China's memory of the Second World War has been reshaped and reinterpreted over recent decades, and how this evolving narrative serves contemporary political purposes both domestically and internationally. Mitter's previous book, Forgotten Ally, was widely acclaimed for restoring China's role in the Allied war effort to Western consciousness, arguing that China's enormous sacrifice in fighting Japan has been systematically undervalued in Western accounts of the war. In China's Good War, he turns his attention to how China itself remembers and uses this history, exploring the shift from a narrative of victimhood to one of triumph and global leadership. Mitter is a regular contributor to BBC radio and television, the Financial Times, and other major media outlets, and his ability to communicate complex historical and political ideas to general audiences is exceptional. His scholarship is characterised by deep archival research, intellectual nuance, and a commitment to helping Western readers understand China on its own terms. China's Good War is available as an audiobook, offering listeners a timely, illuminating analysis of how historical memory shapes present-day geopolitics and national identity in the world's most populous nation.