How do India's middle school textbooks portray China?
- Source: Peopel's Daily Online
- [17:40 September 02 2009]
- Comments
History textbooks: China is inevitably mentioned
Compared to the politics textbooks, the history textbooks have more specific China-related content and more objective and appropriate arguments. They are even enlightening to a Chinese reader.
"Our textbooks contain little about ancient Chinese history, but China is inevitably mentioned in connection with ancient Indian history. This is really very interesting because a large part of ancient Indian history is based on the records of Chinese people, such as the books written by monk Xuanzang about his travels," said Saroji, a high-school history teacher at the Tagore International School in New Delhi, India's capital. He added, "I believe that each student should therefore know the stories of monk Xuanzang."
Indian high-school history textbooks contain unexpectedly detailed modern and contemporary Chinese history. The history textbook for the 11th grade contains modern and contemporary world history and covers important events in all countries between the 19th and 20th century in chronological order, just like Chinese history textbooks. China is therefore inevitably mentioned.
In particular however, the textbook contains a special "the road to modernization" topic, which covers the modernization of all Asian countries. There are 10 to 11 pages about China's modernization, including the two opium wars at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Old Democratic Revolution, the founding of the Republic of China, the War of Resistance against Japan, the development of the CPC, the founding of New China, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and post-1978 reform and opening-up.
At the beginning of that section of the textbook is the statement: "China's modern history always centers on how to safeguard state sovereignty, end colonial rule by foreign countries and strive for equity and development." This part of the textbook is not in chronological order. It respectively covers the rise and fall of political powers over the period, including the fall of the Qing Dynasty and traditional Chinese culture, the bourgeois democratic revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the founding of the Republic of China, and the establishment of the CPC and New China.
Aside from texts, the textbook also contains more vivid content such as photos, maps and graphs. The textbook also has a special column explaining the Chinese imperial examination system, the eight-legged essay and their adverse impacts.
Chinese people are very familiar with this part of history, but the Indians have a novel way to write about it. For example, Indian text compares the modernization of China and Japan, and analyzes the differences and their respective advantages and disadvantages.
The book states, "The histories of China and Japan show how different the paths the two countries took, driven by different historical conditions in building independent modern countries. Japan successfully carried forward its traditions and made them suit the new era, although the top-down modernization process also led to radical and aggressive nationalism. In contrast, China chose to abandon traditions, destroy the old and establish the new."
Moreover, the textbook also incorporates China-related recorded material by some contemporaries, including a small special topic named "how the discriminated unite," which cites the diaries of Bark Crichton, an African-American jazz musician who lived in Shanghai in the 1930's. The diaries reveal the situations of Chinese people at that time as well as their hatred and struggle against foreign colonists from the perspective of a foreigner.
A netizen named "Yantaoju" at the bbs.huanqiu.com contributed to this article.
