teaching about the recent past

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When and how things get into textbooks and into classrooms is a topic that has long fascinated me. Hong Kong residents have been dramatic in their observance of the sacrifices made by protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. And they've turned out to demand more voice in their own affairs as well.

The suppression of the 1989 demonstrations, though, is a sensitive political topic, especially since 1997 when China resumed control over Hong Kong. The events at Tiananmen only crept into textbooks there recently. And only now is it being included in the standard curriculum. Take a look at the attached article from the South China Morning Post (fair academic use, you may use with your students, but ought not otherwise circulate it).

[Anonymous]

Interesting article on air saftey in China in the Los Angeles Times today. I can't figure out how to link it here.
Susan Carle

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A new pirated translation of Clinton's memoir has come out in China. I've already asked my friends to get me a copy.

I've attached a Times of London story about the book, which is quite fanciful.

Among the "innovations" in the text are:

Hope, Arkansas has spectacular feng shui.

Clinton learned a great deal from Mao.

[clay dube]

I've attached a copy of a Dec. 6 NY Times article on how Chinese history is taught in China's high schools. Please click on the icon below to open the article. You may find the discussion of how controversial recent events (occupation of Tibet, suppression of 1989 democracy movement) are treated especially interesting. The article with its illustrations is available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/06/international/asia/06textbook.html

Greg -- have any teacher pals spoken with you about how they teach about their own country?

[clay dube]

Maybe it's frustration at having missed out on signing Yao Ming. Nike has had to pull a new ad aimed at the Chinese market. It features an awesome LeBron James (the gifted star just a year out of high school) dominating an animated Chinese figure.

The attached Guardian article has the details.

Any thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Laughing Dragon, Dancing Bear
Ray McGovern
December 16, 2004
While Bush, the neocons and centrist Democrats reinforce their groupthink over terrorism, China and Russia are proving that great powers are not done making history. Ray McGovern picks up the story that American papers have been slow to grasp: China and Russia have agreed to conduct joint military activities, in China, in 2005.

Ray McGovern began his 27-year career with the CIA as the analyst for Soviet relations with China and Southeast Asia. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

The most striking result of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov's four-day visit to China this week was the agreement announced Monday to hold "substantial military exercises on Chinese territory in 2005" (quote from Russia's Interfax news agency). This was Ivanov's second trip to Beijing this year, and Chinese President Hu Jintao used the occasion to assert, "Sino-Russian strategic coordination has attained an unprecedentedly high level."

The agreement to hold joint exercises is, in fact, unprecedented, and Hu went on to express satisfaction at the growth in relations between the two armies. Not that you would know any of this from our lethargic press.

The Chinese and Russian news services played up the story, and AP and Reuters correspondents promptly filed detailed reports from Beijing. But most U.S. print media—The Washington Post, for example—ignored the story. The New York Times Tuesday cut it down to two sentences tacked onto the end of a roundup titled "World Briefing" on page A6.

Nevertheless, it is a highly significant development, pointing out how major regional powers are reacting to the policy and actions of what they perceive to be the world's big bully.

Unparalleled Heights

The announcement of the military exercises planned for next year comes not long after Soviet President Vladimir Putin, while visiting Beijing in October, said bilateral relations had reached "unparalleled heights." During his visit, Putin signed an agreement that settled the last of the disputes along the 7,500-kilometer border between the two countries.

Those disputes had led to armed clashes in the '60s and '70s, particularly in areas where the frontier is defined by the main channel of border rivers, which meander. Islands ended up being claimed by both sides. The overall political backdrop, though, was China's claim to 1.5 million square kilometers taken from China under what it called "unequal treaties" dating back to the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. These irredentist claims, a staple of Chinese anti-Soviet rhetoric, have been muted.

Putin's October visit also produced an agreement to jointly develop Russian energy reserves, an agreement by which China hopes to help ensure the supply of fuel for its burgeoning economy. Over the past decade Sino-Russian bilateral trade has grown by leaps and bounds. Most important, China has become Russia's arms industry's premier customer. This year, the Chinese are buying about $2 billion in weapons, many of them top of the line. For Russia, these sales are an important source of export earnings and keep key segments of its defense industry afloat. Cut off from arms sales from the West, Beijing has come to rely on Russia more and more for sophisticated arms and technology.

Fears Foreseen

For those familiar with the acerbic nature of Russian-Chinese relations over the years, the announcement of joint military exercises should be a wake-up call. The switch from extreme hostility to rapprochement is, in my view, a sea change in the broader strategic equation. The fact that the improvement in ties has been incremental, at least up until now, makes it no less real—or less of a potential threat to U.S. interests.

NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia over Kosovo in 1999 had already heightened the need felt by China and Russia to buttress mutual security ties. The experience eroded the confidence each had in its ability to advance and protect its interests by using its veto at the United Nations Security Council. That confidence suffered a far more serious blow when the United States and UK decided to attack Iraq without explicit Security Council approval. This created even stronger incentive for Russia and China to quicken their rapprochement.

Pre-9/11 progress in political, economic and military relations reached a highpoint with the conclusion of a Sino-Russian treaty signed by Presidents Putin and Jiang Zemin in Moscow in July 2001. That treaty reflected a mutual understanding that the two countries need to collaborate closely if they are to dilute what each sees as U.S. efforts to dominate the post-Cold War international order. The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 greatly increased the incentive for such collaboration, which has now been rendered more tangible by the scheduling of joint military exercises next year.

Fears Confirmed

The Russians and Chinese look on the quicksand in which U.S. forces are trying to stay afloat in Iraq with mixed feelings: alarm at what they see as unconstrained, unpredictable U.S. behavior, and Schadenfreude at the fiasco brought about by ineptitude on the part of senior civilian defense officials and careerism among the generals, many of whom know better but have not the spine to tell their superiors that the war in Iraq cannot be won.

What seems clear is that because of the U.S./U.K. attack on Iraq, China and Russia intend to give each other meaningful political support if Washington embarks on a new military adventure—against Iran, for example. That same assurance of mutual support and cooperation could also serve to embolden the Russians or Chinese for adventurism of their own—vis-à-vis Taiwan, for example, or Ukraine—taking advantage of the fact that the Umited States is pinned down in and preoccupied with Iraq.

Pandora's World

The lid is now off Pandora's preventive box. Just before leaving for Beijing, Defense Minister Ivanov made it clear that Russia "reserves the right to carry out preventive strikes with conventional weaponry on terror bases anywhere they are found in the world." Indeed, it may be a short step to applying the "terrorist" label to those wearing orange in Kiev.

Like subterranean geological plates that shift imperceptibly, changes with immense political repercussions can occur so gradually as to be imperceptible—until the earthquake. Over the past several years, there has been rather broad consensus among specialists that, despite the gradual rapprochement between Russia and China, both remain more interested in developing good relations with the United States than with each other.

This may no longer be the case. If it is not, our leaders ought to be given this bad news. Those who work on these questions would, I believe, be well advised to get together, give the issues fresh scrutiny and spell out what their findings imply for U.S. policy.

There has always been a mix of challenge and opportunity in U.S.-Russian-Chinese triangular diplomacy. But with Condoleezza Rice in the role Henry Kissinger once played so deftly, it is possible that the dangers will escape notice and the opportunities will be squandered.

[clay dube]

The attached article details the effort by the Chinese central government to promote the use of Mandarin, even in dubbing the popular American cartoon "Tom and Jerry." Check it out, your students will certainly connect with this.

[clay dube]

Attached are three news clippings addressing language/dialect questions in China. One survey suggests nearly half of China's population can't speak the "standard" dialect. The second article notes the state directive not to translate foreign programs into local dialects. The third notes that Hong Kong may slip in its importance to world business unless English is re-emphasized in education.

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The CIA recently declassified 70 estimates of China's military strength and policies. You can see the original documents at:

http://www.foia.cia.gov/search.asp?pageNumber=1&freqReqRecord=nic_china.txt

Students may be especially interested in the 1976 document, p. 10 which summarizes what the CIA considers China's main defense considerations.

[Anonymous]

This article is interesting but a more detailed look at what the students actually know would be interesting... just as the teachers know more than they teach, I think the students know more than what's covered in the classroom. My efforts to get into a Chinese history class have been thwarted so far, though I have sat in some English classes..... I'll keep trying. Students are naturally very patriotic here and when one of my colleagues used a powerpoint slide with Taiwan listed as a treaty signatory the question was quickly raised as to whether he realized he had made a mistake.... Taiwan of course is part of China......imagine the standing ovation of students at this point.

I brought up the LeBron "case" with my students from other Asian countries and most thought the government was too quick to pull the plug. Has anyone seen the commercials... I actually think they are pretty good and hit the target audience, young video-game-playing kids pretty well.

[clay dube]

Jung Chang's Wild Swans, a history of several generations of women in her family is a wonderful read and provides an illuminating view of 20th century Chinese history. Chang and her husband, Jon Halliday, have just published an enormous and apparently path-breaking study of Mao Zedong.

Chang/Halliday explode many myths about Mao and the Communist Party's rise to power. The book appears a couple years after new biographies by Jonathan Spence (a concise volume by one of the top historians of China) and Philip Short (a huge volume by a writer who is now coming out with a biography of Pol Pot).

I've attached a review of the book by political scientist Michael Yahuda.

[Author]

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