China occupies two contrasting places in the novel: it is one of the countries children chalk into a street game, and it is a real geopolitical stake in the wartime arguments surrounding American policy. The shift from a name in a child’s game to a territory invoked in presidential rhetoric links neighborhood fears to the larger conflict shaping the story.

A Country in the Street Game

During the long vacation months, the children play “I Declare War” with a rubber ball and a chalk-drawn circle divided into segments bearing the names of countries in the news. China is among the possible targets. When a player declares war on a country, the others run; the player whose country has been named must catch the ball and try to strike the fleeing players. The game turns distant national conflicts into a neighborhood ritual of attack, escape, and counterattack.

The game is played so incessantly that the chalked country names remain on the sidewalk until rain washes them away. Children stepping over or on those names make the imagined map part of everyday street life. China’s place among the listed countries shows how international news enters the children’s world not as distant explanation but as material for repeated play.

China in Wartime Diplomacy

China also figures in the novel’s account of the Hawaii Understanding, signed by the United States and Japan. The agreement recognizes Japan’s sovereignty in East Asia and promises that the United States will not oppose Japanese expansion on the Asian continent, including in French Indochina and the Netherlands Indies. Japan, in turn, recognizes American sovereignty over its own continent and accepts American possessions in the Pacific. In this diplomatic arrangement, China is part of the wider East Asian setting over which the agreement’s guarantees and ambitions bear.

China in Lindbergh’s Rhetoric

After Germany attacks the Soviet Union in June 1941, Charles A. Lindbergh addresses the nation and praises the German campaign as a defense against Communism. In the same address, he presents Japan as dedicated to modernizing China under Chiang Kai-shek and suppressing the Chinese Communist minority. China thus becomes an element in the administration’s public case for remaining outside the war: the conflict is framed as a struggle against Communism rather than as a reason for American intervention.

The novel’s two uses of China are deliberately different in scale. In the children’s game, the country is one name among several on a chalk circle, selected in an instant as the object of a surprise attack. In official rhetoric, China is invoked to explain the purposes attributed to Japan and to support a political argument about America’s place in the war. Together, these appearances show how the language of international conflict filters from public affairs into ordinary childhood.