The news from China, the not-so-sleeping-anymore giant

1. Where’s Mao? Chinese Revise History Books -- by JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING — When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization.

Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once — in a chapter on etiquette.

Nearly overnight the country’s most prosperous schools have shelved the Marxist template that had dominated standard history texts since the 1950’s. The changes passed high-level scrutiny, the authors say, and are part of a broader effort to promote a more stable, less violent view of Chinese history that serves today’s economic and political goals.

Supporters say the overhaul enlivens mandatory history courses for junior and senior high school students and better prepares them for life in the real world. The old textbooks, not unlike the ruling Communist Party, changed relatively little in the last quarter-century of market-oriented economic reforms. They were glaringly out of sync with realities students face outside the classroom. But critics say the textbooks trade one political agenda for another.

They do not so much rewrite history as diminish it. The one-party state, having largely abandoned its official ideology, prefers people to think more about the future than the past.

The new text focuses on ideas and buzzwords that dominate the state-run media and official discourse: economic growth, innovation, foreign trade, political stability, respect for diverse cultures and social harmony.

J. P. Morgan, Bill Gates , the New York Stock Exchange , the space shuttle and Japan’s bullet train are all highlighted. There is a lesson on how neckties became fashionable.

The French and Bolshevik Revolutions, once seen as turning points in world history, now get far less attention. Mao, the Long March, colonial oppression of China and the Rape of Nanjing are taught only in a compressed history curriculum in junior high.

“Our traditional version of history was focused on ideology and national identity,” said Zhu Xueqin, a historian at Shanghai University. “The new history is less ideological, and that suits the political goals of today.”

The changes are at least initially limited to Shanghai. That elite urban region has leeway to alter its curriculum and textbooks, and in the past it has introduced advances that the central government has instructed the rest of the country to follow.

But the textbooks have provoked a lively debate among historians ahead of their full-scale introduction in Shanghai in the fall term. Several Shanghai schools began using the texts experimentally in the last school year.

Many scholars said they did not regret leaving behind the Marxist perspective in history courses. It is still taught in required classes on politics. But some criticized what they saw as an effort to minimize history altogether. Chinese and world history in junior high have been compressed into two years from three, while the single year in senior high devoted to history now focuses on cultures, ideas and civilizations.

“The junior high textbook castrates history, while the senior high school textbook eliminates it entirely,” one Shanghai history teacher wrote in an online discussion. The teacher asked to remain anonymous because he was criticizing the education authorities.

Zhou Chunsheng, a professor at Shanghai Normal University and one of the lead authors of the new textbook series, said his purpose was to rescue history from its traditional emphasis on leaders and wars and to make people and societies the central theme.

“History does not belong to emperors or generals,” Mr. Zhou said in an interview. “It belongs to the people. It may take some time for others to accept this, naturally, but a similar process has long been under way in Europe and the United States.”

Mr. Zhou said the new textbooks followed the ideas of the French historian Fernand Braudel. Mr. Braudel advocated including culture, religion, social customs, economics and ideology into a new “total history.” That approach has been popular in many Western countries for more than half a century.

Mr. Braudel elevated history above the ideology of any nation. China has steadily moved away from its ruling ideology of Communism, but the Shanghai textbooks are the first to try examining it as a phenomenon rather than preaching it as the truth.

Socialism is still referred to as having a “glorious future.” But the concept is reduced to one of 52 chapters in the senior high school text. Revolutionary socialism gets less emphasis than the Industrial Revolution and the information revolution.

Students now study Mao — still officially revered as the founding father of modern China but no longer regularly promoted as an influence on policy — only in junior high. In the senior high school text, he is mentioned fleetingly as part of a lesson on the custom of lowering flags to half-staff at state funerals, like Mao’s in 1976.

Deng Xiaoping , who began China’s market-oriented reforms, appears in the junior and senior high school versions, with emphasis on his economic vision.

Gerald A. Postiglione, an associate professor of education at the University of Hong Kong, said mainland Chinese education authorities had searched for ways to make the school curriculum more relevant.

“The emphasis is on producing innovative thinking and preparing students for a global discourse,” he said. “It is natural that they would ask whether a history textbook that talks so much about Chinese suffering during the colonial era is really creating the kind of sophisticated talent they want for today’s Shanghai.”

That does not mean history and politics have been disentangled. Early this year a prominent Chinese historian, Yuan Weishi, wrote an essay that criticized Chinese textbooks for whitewashing the savagery of the Boxer Rebellion, the violent movement against foreigners in China at the beginning of the 20th century. He called for a more balanced analysis of what provoked foreign interventions at the time.

In response, the popular newspaper supplement Freezing Point, which carried his essay, was temporarily shut down and its editors were fired. When it reopened, Freezing Point ran an essay that rebuked Mr. Yuan, a warning that many historical topics remained too delicate to discuss in the popular media.

The Shanghai textbook revisions do not address many domestic and foreign concerns about the biased way Chinese schools teach recent history. Like the old textbooks, for example, the new ones play down historic errors or atrocities like the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the army crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989.

The junior high school textbook still uses boilerplate idioms to condemn Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930’s and includes little about Tokyo’s peaceful, democratic postwar development. It will do little to assuage Japanese concerns that Chinese imbibe hatred of Japan from a young age.

Yet over all, the reduction in time spent studying history and the inclusion of new topics, like culture and technology, mean that the content of the core Chinese history course has contracted sharply.

The new textbook leaves out some milestones of ancient history. Shanghai students will no longer learn that Qin Shihuang, who unified the country and became China’s first emperor, ordered a campaign to burn books and kill scholars, to wipe out intellectual resistance to his rule. The text bypasses well-known rebellions and coups that shook or toppled the Zhou, Sui, Tang and Ming dynasties.

It does not mention the resistance by Han Chinese, the country’s dominant ethnic group, to Kublai Khan’s invasion and the founding of the Mongol-controlled Yuan dynasty. Wen Tianxiang, a Han Chinese prime minister who became the country’s most transcendent symbol of loyalty and patriotism when he refused to serve the Mongol invaders, is also left out.

Some of those historic facts and personalities have been replaced with references to old customs and fashions, prompting some critics to say that history teaching has lost focus.

“Would you rather students remember the design of ancient robes, or that the Qin dynasty unified China in 221 B.C.?” one high school teacher quipped in an online forum for history experts.

Others speculated that the Shanghai textbooks reflected the political viewpoints of China’s top leaders, including Jiang Zemin , the former president and Communist Party chief, and his successor, Hu Jintao .

Mr. Jiang’s “Three Represents” slogan aimed to broaden the Communist Party’s mandate and dilute its traditional emphasis on class struggle. Mr. Hu coined the phrase “harmonious society,” which analysts say aims to persuade people to build a stable, prosperous, unified China under one-party rule.

The new textbooks de-emphasize dynastic change, peasant struggle, ethnic rivalry and war, some critics say, because the leadership does not want people thinking that such things matter a great deal. Officials prefer to create the impression that Chinese through the ages cared more about innovation, technology and trade relationships with the outside world.

Mr. Zhou, the Shanghai scholar who helped write the textbooks, says the new history does present a more harmonious image of China’s past. But he says the alterations “do not come from someone’s political slogan,” but rather reflect a sea change in thinking about what students need to know.

“The government has a big role in approving textbooks,” he said. “But the goal of our work is not politics. It is to make the study of history more mainstream and prepare our students for a new era.”


2. Fifty foreigners shaping China's modern development

Throughout China's time-honored history, the era that began in 1840 was characterized with the biggest, fastest, most fierce and complicated changes. There were many foreigners that could have influence upon China in this very period, but generally speaking, 50 of them could doubtlessly best demonstrate the epochal features that China collided with the world.

Arranged according to the date of birth, the 50 foreigners are:

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778): Swiss-French philosopher, writer, political theorist and thinker;
George Macartney (1737 - 1806): British diplomat;
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766 - 1834): British political economist and founder of population theory;
Charles Elliot (1801 - 1875): Chief Superintendent of the trade of British subjects to China during Opium War;
Hans Andersen (1805 - 1875): Well-known Danish writer of fairy tales;
Charles Darwin (1809 - 1875): Famous British Naturalist;
Karl Marx (1818 - 1883): German philosopher, thinker, social scientist and political theorist;
Friedrich Engels (1820 - 1895): German philosopher, thinker and political theorist;
John Glasgow Kerr (1824 - 1901): Follower of Presbyterian Church (USA);
William Alexander Parsons Martin (1827 - 1916): U.S.' Protestant missionary to China;
Henrik Ibsen (1828 - 1906): great Norwegian playwright;
Alfred Graf Von Waldersee (1832 - 1904): German army man and Commander in chief of Eight-Power Allied Force in August 1900;
Hobert Hart (1835 - 1911): General Commissioner of Customs to China for half century;
Ito Hirobumi (1841 - 1909): Japan ese statesman;
Timothy Richard (1845 - 1919): British missionary;
Arthur Henderson Smith (1854 - 1932): American Congregational Church missionary to China;
Silas Aaron Hardoon (1849 - 1931): Richest Jewish businessman specialising in real estate through plundering China's wealth before national liberation in 1949;
Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939): Austria n originator of psychoanalysis;
Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941): One of India 's greatest poet, writer, artist as well as social activist;
Mcmahon (1862 - 1949): British officer who took part in Simla Convention in early 20th century with an aim of separating Tibet from China;
Marie Curie (1876 - 1934): First woman Nobel Prize winner;
Maksim Gorky (1868 - 1936): Great proletarian writer of former Soviet Union;
Vladimir Lenin (1870 - 1924): Founder of former Soviet Union and Communism;
John D. Rockefeller, Jr (1874 - 1960): Son of the creator of Standard Oil and philanthropist;
Stalin (Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili) (1879 - 1953): Great former Soviet Union leader;
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955): German-born American physicist;
Leon Trotsky (1879 - 1940): One of the earliest leaders of Russia and Soviet Union;
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945): 23rd U.S. president;
Okamura Yasuji (1884 - 1966): Commander in chief of Japanese troop stationed in China;
Mikhail Markovich Borodin (1884 - 1951): Envoy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to China;
Nehru (1889 - 1964): Former chairman of India National Congress;
Norman Bethune (1890 - 1939): Great internationalist from Canada ;
Harland Sanders (1890 - 1980): Founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC);
Nikita Khrushchev (1894 - 1971): Former premier of the Soviet Union;
Matsusita Kounosuke (1894 - 1989): Founder of Panasonic, world's renown household appliance in Japan;
Armand Hammer (1898 - 1990): President of America's Occidental Petroleum
Hirohito (1901 - 1989): Emperor of Japan;
Otto Braun (Li De in Chinese) (1901 - 1974): Military advisor Communist International of Germany to China;
Ivan V. Arkhipov (1907 - 1998): Vice minister of Metallurgy in former Soviet Union;
Kim Il Sung (1912 - 1994): Founder of Democratic People's Republic of Korea ( DPRK );
Richard Milhous Nixon (1913 - 1994): One of the most influential presidents in American history;
Tanaka Kakuei (1918 ¨C 1993): Former Japanese prime minister and most powerful and aggressive faction leader in the LDP;
Juan Antonio Samaranch (1920 - ): Former IOC president and social activist from Spain ;
Henry Alfred Kissinger (1923 - ): Former U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State;
Alvin Toffler (1928 - ): American sociologist;
Ken Takakura (1931 - ): Famous Japanese actor;
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (1931 - ): President of former Soviet Union;
Steven Spielberg (1947 - ): Famous Hollywood movie director;
Bill Gates (1955 - ): Founder of software giant Microsoft;
Michael Jordan (1963 - ): American basketball legend.

(By People's Daily Online)


3. China Growth (Robert Reich's Blog)

I've been watching the statistics coming out of China about its economic growth. Here are three things you should know.
(1) The people managing China's economy (I'm not talking about the politicians but about the financial and economic wizards who are actually making decisions about money supply, capital markets, and the like) are extremely good. They match the best economic minds anywhere in the world. In other words, they know what they're doing.
(2) The latest data show China is now growing at a rate faster than 11 percent. That's extraordinary. It's faster than China has been growing for the last five years -- and that was faster than anyone had predicted. China's rate of economic growth is the biggest economic news in the world.
(3) That growth is putting huge demands on world energy supplies, and raw materials. Oil prices will continue to rise, as will all other commodities. This is the most important economic fact in the world right now. It is also among the most important political facts in the world.

Comments:
RodgerRafter said...
I've been to China 4 times (2 adoptions and 2 dragonboat races), and viewed economic activity with great interest.

Especially interesting has been the ways surplus labor is absorbed by the economy. In service sector jobs there are typically many times more workers than you'd find in an American operation (and the service is amazingly good there). In construction its the same, with much more work being done by hand.

I think a very large part of the economic growth has been from productivity gains. As the most basic and most advanced industrial tools and technologies get incorporated into the Chinese way of doing things, the jobs get done much more efficiently. Also, as millions of people move from the countryside to the cities they get incorporated into far more productive industries.

I agree with you completely, Professor Roach, that the Chinese government is extremely good in its economic planning. This rate of growth won't continue, but a cooling won't be bad for the economy either. The central planners can effectively shift surplus labor toward infrastructure and middle-class-quality-of-life improvements as the country's needs change.

China's greatest economic triumph has been the way it has suckered developed nations into giving up their technological advantages in order to secure cheap goods. As a result, the bulk of the Chinese economy has gone from third world to 1st world in record time, while building up massive currency reserves instead of massive debts.

Lastly, China's banking system has been criticized for being too loose, but I think the Chinese central bank is on the right track by increasing reserve requirements. If only the Fed would follow their lead we might have a chance of bringing inflation back under control:

http://rebalancing.blogspot.com/2006/07/inflation-accelerating-and-interest.html

BDG123 said...
While the future will determine how China’s leaders will be judged, I believe they will be judged a failure in their attempt to control the economic cycle. It was just a few decades ago Americans were enamored with a similar situation in Japan. Fear was rampant in America that we had lost our way and inevitably Japan would take the economic mantle from the US. Twenty five years later, Japan is still a managed economy with massive debts and a basically insolvent banking system.

China is less of an economic miracle and more of a mirage. The miracle is the staying power of the American consumer that they rely upon to fund their house of cards which is significantly more unstable than anything Japan ever experienced. Overbuilding and overheating of their economy at a time when imbalances are building internationally will surely lead to an unpleasant outcome. And one which involves deflationary pressures. Chinese companies are basically profitless government controlled enterprises more concerned about full employment than developing a market based economy due to the lack of domestic reforms. These reforms were never addressed because China foolishly believed the export engine to America would last forever so why take the tough medicine when you are living the high life. To the contrary, China has created a ruse for its citizens by allowing just enough freedom to keep the natives from wholesale revolt.

They’ve compounded their problems by leaving interest rates artificially low to continue to drive growth. The carry trade has incented Chinese banks to increase year over year lending by thirty percent into an already overbuilt and overheated industrial and real estate sector. If the American consumer slows or if the dollar resets significantly against Korean, Japanese and other Asian currencies, China will likely experience a domino effect leading to a significant recession or significantly worse for all. With reduced exports to the US, China’s fragile economy will feel the extreme effects of significant inflation caused by artificially low rates and very high global energy prices given 800 million Chinese still make less than $2 a day. And given the crudeness of their financial system, the majority of banks must continue to lend money to an ever greater mess of insolvent businesses in order to provide some basis for continued cash flow into an insolvent banking system continually propped up by government cash infusions and the deposits by Chinese citizens. If the house of cards starts to collapse, Chinese consumers may create a run on the banks given their lack of confidence of a communist leadership which is still very prevalent.

In the end, China will be lucky to experience something as benign as Japan’s deflationary cycle which was caused by similar circumstances. Yet, the Japanese people have a common consciousness which pulled them through. China, a nation of many cultures and void of political freedoms for half a century will likely not respond in kind. I believe China is a ticking time bomb and that political strife or economic strife or both will likely develop within the next few years should America experience a severe recession and the lack of Chinese domestic reform comes to light because of it. You must pay the piper. You cannot cheat the economic cycle through central planning, overbuilding and a mirage of America spending forever while refusing to address domestic reforms. It’s not a matter of “if” but “when” they will pay the piper in my opinion.