China Seminar public talk

March 9, 12:00pm - 1:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Moore 319 (Tokioka Room) Add to Calendar

12:00 noon, Wed, 3/9

Gao Bei

“Chinese Policy toward European Jewish Refugees in Shanghai during World War II”

Abstract:
Jews first came to China in the tenth century along the Silk Road, and they later established a community in the ancient city of Kaifeng. In the early twentieth century, after the Chinese successfully overthrew alien Manchu rule, many Chinese nationalists and intellectuals embraced the Zionist movement to inspire their fellow countrymen. In the late 1930s, when China faced the challenge of the Japanese invasion, a number of intellectuals used the example of the Jews, a people without a homeland, to caution other Chinese about the danger of losing their own country and to call for Chinese resistance against Japan. At the time Jewish refugees were fleeing Nazi-controlled Europe for the safety of Japanese-occupied Shanghai, in a general sense, Jews were considered symbols of national independence and salvation in China. Nevertheless, China was at a critical moment in its war against Japan. Officials in both the Chinese and Japanese governments believed that Jews were wealthy and politically influential in the West, especially in the United States. So both the Chinese Nationalist government and the Japanese occupation authorities thought very carefully about the Shanghai Jews and how they could be used to win international financial and political support in their war against one another.

About the speaker:
Gao Bei was born and raised in Beijing and earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Kitakyushu in Japan. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia and is currently Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Shanghai Sanctuary: Chinese and Japanese Policy toward European Jewish Refugees during WWII (Oxford University Press, 2013) is her first book.


Event Sponsor
Center for Chinese Studies and Confucius Institute at UHM, Mānoa Campus

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