Passivity, resistance, and collaboration

"In contrast to the rich scholarship devoted to the human condition in Nazi-occupied Europe, especially Vichy France, few historians have delved deeply into the question of Chinese responses to the Japanese Occupation of 1937-45. Focusing on the intellectual life of Shanghai under occupation, this book attempts to correct the post-war perception of occupied China as a field of conflict between selfless resisters and shameless collaborators."--BOOK JACKET. "Instead, the author shows that wartime Shanghai exhibited a complexity and ambiguity of moral choices that defies such stereotyping. Ambiguous response was only natural in an extreme situation of dehumanizing terror, which Primo Levi aptly calls the "gray zone" of existence: a situation in which weakness, inconsistent behavior and compromises mingle with dignity and moral courage.^ The inner conflicts were especially acute among Chinese writers, who had a strong tradition of seeing themselves as moral spokesmen for their people."--BOOK JACKET. "The author argues that writers in occupied Shanghai exhibited a triad of responses to the Occupation - passivity, resistance, and collaboration. Many writers chose to live a reclusive life