Grains of Conflict
Book • 2025
Grains of Conflict examines the bureaucratic processes and deeply human stories of requisitioning, transporting, and storing grain in Nationalist-held China.
It helps readers rethink the geographies, timings and burdens of China’s war of resistance – as well as the meanings of total war itself.
By uncoupling ‘total war’ from images of industrialized warfare, Grains of Conflict shows how China’s war with Japan mobilized the labor and resources of Chinese society on a total scale.
The book explores the achievements and difficulties of Nationalist grain mobilization and discusses how the long conflict in China became a multi-sided ‘struggle for food’ – with devastating results.
It helps readers rethink the geographies, timings and burdens of China’s war of resistance – as well as the meanings of total war itself.
By uncoupling ‘total war’ from images of industrialized warfare, Grains of Conflict shows how China’s war with Japan mobilized the labor and resources of Chinese society on a total scale.
The book explores the achievements and difficulties of Nationalist grain mobilization and discusses how the long conflict in China became a multi-sided ‘struggle for food’ – with devastating results.
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Jennifer Yip
Jennifer Yip, "Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in China’s Total War, 1937-1945" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
