Abstract Outside of the dominant frame depicting World War II as a showdown between the Allied and Axis powers, the war also represented a critical juncture in the global battle between empire and nation. In Asia, the war allowed a “semi‐colonial” China to successfully reclaim its sovereignty from both its allies and enemies and compelled the Dutch to forfeit colonial rule in Indonesia and its prestige as a regional power. Moving beyond conventional dichotomies and great‐power bias, this paper analyses two portentous wartime controversies between China and the Netherlands, whose common goals as allies did not prevent clashes over diametrically opposed national pursuits. In exposing the conflicting nature of their respective nationalisms, these disputes elucidate the interplay of war, nationalism, and imperialism in East Asia as well as China's changing place in the emergent post‐war regional and global orders. The Dutch refusal to accept these shifting realities and underlying notions of national self‐determination presaged the traumatic trajectory of Indonesia's decolonisation.