Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in China's Total War, 1937 - 1945

How did the Nationalist government feed their armies during its war against Japan, and survive eight years of war against all odds? Jennifer Yip demonstrates how the Chinese government relied on mass civilian mobilization to carry out all stages of military provisioning, from procurement to transportation and storage. The intensive use of civilian labor and assets–a distinctly preindustrial resource base–shaped China's conception of its total war effort, and distinguished China's experience as unique among World War Two combatants. Yip challenges the predominant image of World War II as one of technological prowess and the tendency to conflate total war with industrialized warfare. Ultimately, China sustained total war with premodern means: by ruthlessly extracting civilian resources.

Jennifer Yip is an Assistant Professor of History at the National University of Singapore. She was previously a 2022–2023 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin.

Jennifer obtained a B.A. (Hons.) in History at the National University of Singapore, a Master of Philosophy in World History at the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a historian of modern war, strategy, and the socio-economic effects of war mobilization, with expertise in Republican China (1911–1949). Her current research examines the Chinese Nationalist government’s military grain procurement and transportation policies during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). It highlights the seizure of grain as the lynchpin of the three-way struggle among the Nationalists, Chinese Communists, and Japanese.

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Host or Publisher Center for East Asian Studies