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“One country, two histories”: how PRC and western narratives of Chinese modernity diverge
Abstract
Held in October 2017, the 19th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress enshrined not just Xi Jinping's grip on power. It also re-coated its ideology with a medley of Socialist and traditionalist buzz words that had been marginalized in the 1980s. During the height of the reform era, these increasingly made way for ideas borrowed from market economies. Predictably enough, the ideological ferment surrounding the 19th Party Congress has since also played out in the realm of education. This article examines in detail the most current history textbooks used in PRC classrooms to construe China's recent past. To that end, included in my exploration will not just be changing PRC attitudes to Chinese modern history, but also PRC instruction of world history. In passing, I will also compare the school material with the latest authoritative Western scholarly studies of the same topics by way of eliciting how PRC official historical narratives of 19th–20th century events diverge from Western ones. A better understanding of those narratives is crucial to predicting how the PRC will behave on the world stage as an emerging global superpower.
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Associate Professor at Western Sydney University, Niv Horesh is the author of many books on China including How China's Rise is Changing the Middle East (Routledge, 2019), co-authored with Anoushiravan Ehteshami.
https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/the-confucian-roots-of-xi-jinpings-policies
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-04/china-xi-jinping-is-pushing-a-marxist-revival/9724720
Gotelind Müller, “Teaching ‘The Others’ History' in Chinese Schools: The State, Cultural Asymmetries and Shifting Images of Europe”, in Gotelind Müller ed. Designing History in East Asian Textbooks: Identity Politics and Transnational Aspirations (Routledge, 2011), pp. 32–59.
Alisa Jones, “Changing the Past to Serve the Present: History Education in Mainland China”, in Edward Vickers ed. History Education and National identity in East Asia (Routledge, 2013), p. 69.
Lawrence R. Sullivan. “The Controversy over ‘Feudal Despotism’: Politics and Historiography in China, 1978–82”, in Jonathan Unger ed., Using the Past to Serve the Present: Historiography and Politics in Contemporary China (M.E. Sharpe, 1993), pp. 174–204.
Gotelind Müller, op. cit.
Alisa Jones, op. cit, p. 73
Barbara Barnoin and Yu Changgen, Ten Years of Turbulence: The Cultural Revolution (Routledge, 2012), p. 28.
Edward Vickers, “Defining the Boundaries of ‘Chineseness’: Tibet Mongolia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in Mainland History Textbooks”, in Stuart J. Foster and Keith A. Crawford eds., What Shall We Tell Our Children? International Perspectives on School History Textbooks (Greenwich Information Age, 2006), pp. 25–48.
Alisa Jones, op. cit, p. 85; Caroline Rose, “Changing Views of the Anti-Japanese War in Chinese High School History Textbooks”, in Paul Morris, Naoko Shimazu, and Edward Vickers. eds. Imagining Japan in Post-war East Asia: Identity Politics, Schooling and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2013), pp. 129–148; Edward Vickers and Yang Biao, “Shanghai's History Curriculum Reforms and Shifting Textbook Portrayals of Japan”, China Perspectives 4(2013), pp. 29–37. See also Rana Mitter, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Nationalism, History and Memory in the Beijing War of Resistance Museum, 1987–1997”, China Quarterly 161(2000), pp. 279–293.
Gotelind Müller, op. cit.
On the engendering of the “100 Years of National Humiliation” trope see e.g. William A. Callahan, China: The Pessoptimist Nation (Oxford University Press, 2012), Chapter 3.
See e.g. Yingjie Guo and Baogang He, “Reimagining the Chinese Nation: the ‘Zeng Guofan’ Phenomenon”, Modern China 25.2(1999), pp. 142–170. See also Peter H. Gries, China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (University of California Press, 2004), p. 70; Edward Vickers, “Museums and Nationalism in Contemporary China”, Compare 37.3(2007), pp. 365–382; Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations (Columbia University Press, 2014), p. 102.
Gilbert Rozman, East Asian National Identities: Common Roots and Chinese Exceptionalism (Wilson Center, 2012), p. 77.
For an overview of how the Western scholarly discussion of Chinese history evolved over time, see e.g. Paul Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Chinese Recent Past (Columbia University Press, 2010); Ming Dong Gu, Sinologism: An Alternative to Orientalism and Postcolonialism (Routledge, 2013); Harriet T. Zurndorfer, China Bibliography: A Research Guide to reference Works about China Past and Present (Brill, 1995), pp. 4–44.
Zhongguo lishi [Chinese History, 4 vols., 7th–8th Grades, Approved Textbooks for Trial by the Ministry of Education], Beijing: Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001–2017; Shijie lishi [World History, 2 vols., 9th Grade, Approved Textbooks for Trial by the Ministry of Education], Beijing: Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001–2017.
Gideon Shelach-Lavi, “‘Our China’ – Archaeological Museums as Reflections of National and Local Identities in China”, Historia 37(2016), pp. 111–140.
See e.g. Niv Horesh and Ruike Xu, “CCP Elite Perception of the US since the Early 1990s: Wang Huning and Zheng Bijian as Test Cases”, Asian Affairs 48.1(2017), pp. 51–74.
Julia Lovell, The Opium War (Picador, 2011); Mao Haijian, Tianchao de bengkui (Sanlian, 1995).
Zhonguo lishi 8.1, p. 11. See also Joseph W. Esherick, “From Tribute to Treaties to Popular Nationalism”, in Brantly Womack ed., China's Rise in Historical Perspective (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), pp. 19–38.
See e.g. Rudolf G. Wagner, “The Role of the Foreign Community in the Chinese Public Sphere”, China Quarterly 142(1995), pp. 423–443.
See e.g. Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (Norton, 1990). Cf. Paul Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Chinese Recent Past (Columbia University Press, 2010). Cf. R.K.I. Quested, Sino-Russian Relations: A Short History (Routledge, 2005).
Thomas Bartlett, “The Role of History in China's View of the World Today”, Pacifica Review 13.1(2001), pp. 117–126, p. 121.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/03/xi-jinping-has-embracecd-vladimir-putin-for-now/; see also Gilbaer Rozman, The Sino-Russian Challenge to the World Order (Stanford University Press, 2014).
For a wider-angle discussion see Neville Maxwell, “How the Sino-Russian Boundary Conflict was Finally Settled. From Nerchinsk 1689 to Vladivostok 2005 via Zhenbao Island 1969”, Critical Asian Studies 39.2(2007), pp. 229–253.
Zhonguo lishi 8.1, p. 17.
Claudia Schneider, “Looking at our story with different eyes: History textbooks on both sides of the Taiwan Strait”, InterrnationaleSchulbuchforschung 27.1(2005), p. 68–69.
Zhonguo lishi 8.1, p. 33. See also Jun Qinwu, Mandarins and Heretics: The Construction of “Heresy” in Chinese State Discourse (Brill, 2016).
Alisa Jones, op. cit., p. 82.
Zhonguo lishi 8.1, pp. 96–98; see also Zhonguolishi 8.2, p. 2.
Frank Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945–1957 (Bloomsbury, 2015).
Zhonguo lishi 8.1, pp. 106–107.
Zhonguo lishi 8.1, pp. 96–98, p. 102
Rana Mitter, China's War with Japan, 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival (Penguin, 2013).
Rana Mitter, “China's ‘Good War’: Voices, Locations, and Generations in the Interpretation of the War of Resistance to Japan”, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter eds., Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia (Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 173–174.
Edward Vickers, “Frontiers of Memory: Conflict, Imperialism, and Official Histories in the Formation of Post-Cold War Taiwan Identity”, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter eds., Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia (Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 210.
Zhonguo lishi 8.1, p. 97.
Zhen Wang, “National Humiliation, History Education, and the Politics of Historical Memory: Patriotic Education Campaign in China”, International Studies Quarterly 52.4(2008), pp. 783–806, pp. 790–793; see also Peter H. Gries, China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (University of California Press, 2004), p. 70.
Caroline Rose, “Changing views of the Anti-Japanese War in Chinese high school history textbooks”, in Paul Morris, Naoko Shimazu and Edward Vickers eds., Imagining Japan in Post-War East Asia: Identity Politics, Schooling and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2013), pp. 129–148, ff. 129–131.
Denton, Kirk A. Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China (University of Hawaii Press, 2013), p. 284, FN 11.
Shijie lishi 9. 2, p. 42.
Paul Morris and Edward Vickers, “Unifying the Nation: The Changing Role of Sino-Japanese History in Hong Kong's History Textbook”, in Paul Morris, Naoko Shimazu and Edward Vickers eds., Imagining Japan in Post-war East Asia: Identity Politics, Schooling and Popular Culture (Routledge 2013), p. 149.
Edward Vickers, “Commemorating ‘Comfort Women’ beyond Korea: The Chinese Case”, in Mark R. Frost, Daniel Schumacher and Edwrad Vickers eds., Remembering Asia's World War Two (Routledge, 2019), p. 182.
Zhonguo lishi 8.2, pp. 4–5.
Zhonguo lishi 8.2, pp. 13–14.
Herein I consider Bruce Cumings' influential, The Origins of the Korean War (Yuksa, 2002), to be a revisionist account not representative of the view of most Western specialists. For a more mainstream account see Charles K. Armstrong's Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950–1992 (Cornell University Press, 2013).
Zhonguo lishi 8.2, p. 7.
See Bertil Lintner, China's India War: Collision Course on the Roof of the World (Oxford University Press, 2018).
See King C. Chen, China's War with Vietnam, 1979: Issues, Decisions, and Implications (Hoover Press, 1987).
John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom (Picador, 2016), p. 5.
Zhonguo lishi 8.2, p. 22.
Zhonguo lishi 8.2, p. 27.
Zhonguo lishi 8.2, p. 29. For Western scholarly approaches to the Great Leap Forward, see e.g. Kimberley Ens Manning and FelixWemheuer eds., Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China's Great Leap Forward and Famine (University of British Columbia Press, 2011).
Zhonguo lishi 8.2, pp. 32–35. For mainstream Western scholarly coverage of the Cultural Revolution see e.g. Andrew G. Walder, China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (Harvard University Press, 2015).
Zhonguo lishi 8.2, pp. 39–40.
Zhonguo lishi 8.2, p. 44. See also Marie-Claire Bergère, Shanghai: China's Gateway to Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2009).
See Vickers and Yang, op. cit.
Shijie lishi 9.2, p. 11.
Shijie lishi 9.2, p. 27.
See e.g. Pan Guang, “Shilun Nacui da tusha ji qi dui Youtai minzu de wenming de yingxiang”, Shijie lishi 2(2000), pp. 12–22.
David Shambaugh, China's Communist Party: Anthropy and Adaptation (University of California Press, 2008), Chapter 4.
Shijie lishi 9.2, p. 60–63.
Shijie lishi 9.2, p. 64–65.
Shijie lishi 9.2, p. 91–92.