Historiography is a way for a government to form the collective memory and textbooks are a means to disseminate ideology. This has been an effective way of ruling as history and textbooks are used to brainwash the public by deciding what they should and should not know, all so a government can build its legitimacy.
This can be seen in the steps the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government and the Japanese government are taking to change school curricula in their countries to support their rule.
The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has decided to revise teachers’ manuals for junior and senior-high schools to emphasize that the Takeshima Islands — known as Dokdo in Korean — and the Senkaku Islands — known as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) in Taiwan and the Diaoyu Archipelago (釣魚群島) in China —“are part of Japanese territory.” It is also requiring that textbook publishers follow these rules.
The Study Guide Outline is a guide for textbook publishers and teachers, and the commentary accompanying these guidelines is generally amended once every 10 years. The next amendment was due in 2016, but the Japanese government has moved it forward, showing the urgency with which it wants to consolidate domestic public opinion and its stance internationally.
If this is an objective view of the Japanese government’s efforts, then the textbook changes proposed by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration are also politically motivated, intended to shape the public’s Greater China awareness as well as ingratiate the administration with China.
The new curriculum will change “China” to “mainland China” and “the era of Japanese rule” to “the Japanese colonial era,” changing more than one-third of the curriculum. These are clearly not minor adjustments as the Ministry of Education claims; they are major changes. As expected, the planned shift from a Taiwanese historical perspective to a Greater China outlook has drawn protests from historians.
Although the government’s motive for changing textbooks is very clear, things may not work out the way it wants. Textbooks must be factual and they must comply with reality and with public awareness and expectations. If the government tries to turn textbooks into a tool for its obscurantism, not only will the public be disappointed, but the historical awareness within the textbook framework and public trust in the government will also collapse.
Taiwanese learned this during the Martial Law era, during which education was based on the obscurantist policies of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國). When Taiwanese traveled abroad, where they could obtain a wealth of information contradicting what they had learned in school, they became vehement opponents of the Chiangs.
The Japanese government’s decision that its students should be taught that Dokdo, which is governed by Seoul, and the Diaoyutais, which belong to Taiwan but are governed by Tokyo, all belong to Japan, is untenable legally and in the face of international realities.
Using textbooks to brainwash children will only add to the public’s frustration.
The historical outlook of the Ma administration, which ignores the Taiwanese awareness that has developed over the past two decades and is hoping that its textbook changes will restore the Chiang-era goal of “retaking the mainland” is unrealistic and out of step with public expectations.
Even if students are taught this outlook in class, they will hear and learn otherwise at home, in society at large and on the Internet. The problems created by such cognitive conflict will have a negative impact on the government.
In the end, the curriculum changes will be just another misstep by Ma the bumbler.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
After “Operation Absolute Resolve” to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the US joined Israel on Saturday last week in launching “Operation Epic Fury” to remove Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his theocratic regime leadership team. The two blitzes are widely believed to be a prelude to US President Donald Trump changing the geopolitical landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, targeting China’s rise. In the National Security Strategic report released in December last year, the Trump administration made it clear that the US would focus on “restoring American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere,” and “competing with China economically and militarily
RSS