Sang-Soo Park

Sang-Soo Park is a historian specialising in modern and contemporary China. His research focuses on the history of the Chinese Communist Revolution, the political and social history of Chinese cities, and collaboration during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). He studied at Korea University, where he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in History, before completing his PhD at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in 2022 and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Harvard-Yenching Institute (2014–2015). He is currently Professor of Chinese and Asian History in the Department of History at Korea University.

The project

Title: ino-Japanese Collaboration during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) from a Global Comparative Perspective: Historiographical Dialogues and Shared Experiences

"This project offers a comprehensive, comparative analysis of Sino-Japanese collaboration, situating it in a transnational context that connects East Asia, Japanese-ruled Southeast Asia, and Europe under Nazi occupation. The study adopts a twofold structural comparison. First, it examines contrasting forms of nationalism under occupation: in China, collaboration and organised resistance coexisted in ways reminiscent of European experiences, unlike some Southeast Asian contexts shaped by anti-colonial dynamics. Second, it investigates forms of constrained sovereignty, drawing parallels with occupied Europe–particularly the Vichy regime–to assess the limits of political autonomy, the logics of legitimisation, and the tensions inherent in exercising residual sovereignty under wartime occupation. By crossing these regions and historiographies, the project seeks to move beyond national frameworks, understanding collaboration as a global phenomenon and highlighting the reconfigurations of constraint, adherence, and political survival on a global scale."

Selective Bibliography

• « Neighborhood Space in 1950s Beijing: Urban Governance in the Early PRC », Harvard- Yenching Institute Working Paper Series, juin 2015.
• « 20世纪三四十年代中共在陕甘宁边区与哥老会关系论析 » [Analyse des relations entre le PCC et la société secrète Gelaohui dans la région du Shaan-Gan-Ning, années 1930–1940], 近代史研究 (Jindaishi Yanjiu), n° 6, décembre 2005.
• « 近代中国城市史研究之回顾与瞻望 » [Retour et perspectives sur les études de l’histoire urbaine de la Chine moderne], 城市史研究 (Chengshi Shi Yanjiu), n° 29, décembre 2013.
• « 日中戦争期における中国人協力者 (Chinese Collaborators) ――研究視点の省察 » [Les collaborateurs chinois pendant la guerre sino-japonaise : réflexion critique sur les perspectives de recherche], 中国研究月報 (Chūgoku kenkyū geppō), vol. 66, n° 11, novembre 2012.
• « 東アジア近現代史上のアジア認識の軌跡 ――「アジア主義」のトランスナショナル・ナショナ リズム » [Trajectoire de la perception de l’Asie dans l’histoire contemporaine de l’Asie orientale : le nationalisme transnational du panasiatisme], in KONNO, Jun (dir.), 講座東アジ ア共同体論 [Théorie de la communauté est-asiatique], Tokyo, Ochanomizu Shobō, 2016