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 monograph, Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in China’s Total War, 1937–1945 (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press), investigates the Chinese Nationalist government's military grain provisioning policies during China’s war against Japan. 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.

I am now working on several research projects, all of which are related to strategies of mass mobilization in China between the 1920s and 1950s. These projects include conceptions of civil-military relations Republican China; the use of mass local labor to prosecute China's war against Japan; the New Life Movement; and violent conflict between the Nationalists and CCP throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

EDUCATION:

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

 RESEARCH AREAS:

• China’s war against Japan/World War II in China
• War, revolution, and violent struggle in modern Chinese history
• 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, Jennifer. Carrying the "Nation's Thousand Jin Burden": Yiyun: The Relay Transportation System during the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945.” Modern China 49, no. 5 (2023): 621–53.
• Barnard, Tim and Jennifer Yip. “Too Much Monkey Business.” In Singaporean Creatures: Histories of Humans and Other Animals in the Garden City, 86–106. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2024.