Netizens yesterday accused the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of using education as a propaganda tool for the promotion of its “one country, two areas” (一國兩區) formula, reacting to an article published by a news Web site in China featuring the convener of the Ministry of Education’s curricular adjustment committee, Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波).
Titled “Returning Taiwan’s History Textbooks to ‘One China’: Not Everyone is [former president] Lee Teng-hui (李登輝),” the article published by the Chinese media Web site Guancha.cn on April 29 has triggered heated discussion since it was reposted on the nation’s largest online academic bulletin board system, Professional Technology Temple (PTT), yesterday morning.
Shih Hsin University professor Wang was quoted in the article as saying that the reason adjustments were proposed to high-school curriculum guidelines three years after its implementation was because of misinformation in some history textbooks.
Photo: Chen Yi-chuan, Taipei Times
Some textbooks inaccurately described so-called “comfort women” as having volunteered to work in wartime brothels in Japan, he was quoted as saying.
“They also painted Taiwanese who were enlisted to serve in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II as willingly joining the Japanese Army out of patriotism,” he said.
As former of the Chinese Unification Union vice chairman Wang has been a magnet for controversy.
His remarks often trigger an outpouring of fury from the online community, as did his recent accusation that Democratic Progressive Party chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) incited young students to stand up against curriculum changes.
The remark by Wang during a Taiwanese political talk show on Friday that “our country’s capital is Nanjing, but Taipei is the current capital of the Taiwan area” has also resulted in much criticism from netizens.
In the article published by Guancha.cn, Wang was quoted as saying that the biggest changes were made to the geography textbooks, which were drawn up based on the principle of “one country, two areas.”
The adjustments include a change from “China’s largest island is Hainan, while our country’s highest peak is Jade Mountain (玉山)” to “The largest island is Taiwan. Our nation’s highest peak is Mount Everest and its Taiwan area is surrounded by water,” Wang wrote.
Asked what kind of impact the curriculum adjustments had on the KMT’s campaign for next year’s presidential and legislative elections, Wang said they had created a strong cohesive force among pan-blue supporters.
“A lack of ‘national goals’ is a critical problem facing the KMT. The party requires more convincing rhetoric to persuade the public and that was exactly what we aimed to achieve through the curriculum changes,” Wang said in the article.
In an article published in the Chinese-language monthly magazine Straits Review (海峽評論) in September last year, titled “Textbooks on Japanese occupation and Taiwanese history” (日據與台灣史教科書), Wang wrote that the 2012 revisions of high-school curriculum guidelines were the result of compromises that were, in his opinion, “unsatisfactory, but acceptable.”
“After being incorporated with China-centric East Asian cultural history... the 2012 revisions allow Chinese history to take up more than two semesters of teaching hours,” Wang said.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities. The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg Stanton, and Democratic Representative Dave Min. US Senators John Curtis and Jacky Rosen also introduced a companion bill in the US Senate, which has passed markup at the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Relations. The House’s version of the bill would prioritize the deployment of sensors to detect disruptions or potential sabotage in real-time and enhance early warning capabilities through global intelligence sharing frameworks,
RSS