Jennifer Yip

I am a historian of modern war, strategy, and the socio-economic effects of war mobilization, with a focus on Republican China. Prior to joining the Department, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security and an affiliate of the Asia Policy Program at the University of Texas at Austin.

My first book manuscript focuses on the Chinese Nationalist government's military grain provisioning 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 Communist Party (CCP), and the Japanese. It demonstrates that China, an agrarian economy waging protracted conflict, deserves a place in three fields which have conventionally emphasized Euro-American experiences: the intersection between food and conflict; the global history of military provisioning; and discussions of total war. More broadly, I am interested in the weaponization of food as a persistent theme in statecraft and strategy, and the impact of provisioning on the outcomes and experiences of twentieth-century warfare.

My second research project explores strategies of mass local mobilization in China between 1926 and 1949. I am interested in the role of unskilled manual labor in shaping the course of military conflict, especially within an agrarian context. Because early twentieth-century China lacked modern infrastructure, the Nationalists, the CCP, and the numerous regional armies turned instead to the population to ensure military mobility as they vied for control of China. Thus, menial work–the construction of roads, bridges and dykes, and the use of human carriers to transport provisions–played an outsized role in their campaigns against each other. I also examine how the Nationalists and CCP carefully connoted manual labor with patriotism, citizenship, and revolution, thus presenting such labor as an integral component of their respective political programs.

EDUCATION:

• BA. (Hons), Highest Distinction, History, National University of Singapore
• Master of Philosophy in World History, University of Cambridge
• PhD, History, University of Pennsylvania

RESEARCH AREAS:

• War, conflict and revolution in modern Chinese history
• The Second Sino-Japanese War/World War II in China
• Global histories of financing and supplying war
• Histories of the wartime everyday

TEACHING AREAS:

• Military history and strategic thought
• The World Wars
• World War II in Asia
• Modern Chinese history
• War and society

PUBLICATIONS:

• Yip, J. (2023). Carrying the “Nation’s Thousand-Jin Burden”: Yiyun, the Relay Transportation System during the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945. Modern China, 0(0).