Quarantine and the Transformation of Power Dynamics during China's War of Resistance against Japan

ABSTRACT

Zou and Quan discuss quarantine and the transformation of power dynamics during China's war of resistance against Japan. In the novel Cold Nights (1947), the modern Chinese writer Ba Jin (1904-2005) uses representations of quarantine rather than the frequently used themes of heroic resistance and nationalism to show how China's war of resistance against Japan brought about changes in power relations within the nation. Cold Nights describes how this military engagement in the wartime capital of Chongqing China influences and transforms labor, government, social community, and individuality during an epidemic. In a time when COVID-19 sweeps across the world and also points to the important role quarantine plays in revealing the change and formation of new forms of socio-political power dynamics, more thorough studies of how the enforcement of quarantine can impact different societies and what the consequences of these decisions are for the people are clearly necessary.