Forging the Nation through Friendship: Nationalist China’s Propaganda on Wounded Soldiers in the Early 1940s

This essay offers a reflection on the discourse concerning the relief work for wounded soldiers in China during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression as presented on the pages of the magazine The Friends of the Wounded Soldiers. As the mouthpiece for one of the most important associations connected to the New Life Movement during the war, the journal’s articles offer insights into the articulation of martial citizenship as a core notion in the process of nation‑building in those years, showing how the relief work was conceived as a way of promoting a stronger engagement – articulated in terms of friendship – of the educated élite towards society and the state.