This is an important new study of Chinese discourses on war and peace from the end of the First World War to the death of Mao Zedong. Exploring these discourses and how they changed over this period, Elisabeth Forster focusses, in particular, on jus ad bellum and the question of whether it was just to start a war. She proceeds from the observation that, while many of China's successive and competing governments claimed that China was inherently peaceful, the peacefulness claim contrasts with the many wars China has waged or threatened. She examines the logic of China's peacefulness claim, whether China developed a unique discourse on war and peace or was part of broader global conversations, and what we can learn from China about the global project to create world peace in the twentieth century and, especially, about that project's failure.
