Taiwan revises history textbook to show it's not part of China

Asia-Pacific News

Jan 29, 2007, 1:30 GMT

Taipei - Taiwan has revised its high-school history textbook to show that Taiwan is an independent country, not part of China, a newspaper reported Monday. The China Times said that under the order of the Education Ministry, the title of the national history textbook for high school to be used after the winter vacation has been changed from 'National History' to 'China History.' In this textbook, terms like 'our country,' 'this country' and 'the mainland' have been changed to 'China' to indicate Taiwan is not part of China, the daily said. To distance itself from China, the textbook now uses neutral words to describe events in China's history, like describing the 1911 Wuhan Uprising that toppled the Manchu Dynasty as chishi (riot) instead of chiyi (justified uprising). Another change is that the new textbook has condensed ancient Chinese history but included a part on Taiwan-China separation. This part reads: 'Taiwan's future remains a big question mark. Will Taiwan independence bring war? How to protect Taiwan from being swallowed? How to maintain the status quo? How to deal with China? Taiwan people are frustrated.' Some Taiwan teachers are opposed to the revisions in the high- school history textbook. 'In the compilation of the history textbook, there was strong political intervention from the government, and only one voice was allowed. This is control by the state machine,' the China Times quoted Wu Chan-liang, head of the History Department of the National Taiwan University, as saying. Taiwan and China split in 1949 when the Chinese Nationalists lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to Taiwan to set up their government- in-exile. Until the 1980s, the Taiwan government called itself the legitimate ruler of all of both Taiwan and China and dreamed of recovering the mainland. Since Chen Shui-bian, an independence-leaning Taiwan native, won the presidential election in 2000, he has advocated Taiwan as a sovereignty country and not part of China. In recent years Chen has taken many 'desinication' measures like removing the word 'China' from enterprise names and encouraging locals to speak more the Taiwan dialect, and less Mandarin Chinese. China has been monitoring Taiwan's desinication and warned that it would recover Taiwan by force if Taiwan declares independence or takes concrete steps to achieve de facto independence. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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ChuJan 29th, 2007 - 14:22:21

The Taiwanese have obviously been taking lessons from the Japanese about re-writing history. If the Taiwanese Government really believed that Taiwan was never part of Chinese history then they should depart the island taking the majority Han population with them back to Mainland China and return the land and its rule to the native Aboriginal population. Impractical as that may be a very good start would be for the Taiwanese Government to return all the Imperial Treasures in the National Museum in Taipei which were smuggled out from Mainland China during 1949 at the time of the Communist takeover of China. That way some honesty about their claims can be deduced as then they will really be saying that they want no part of China.

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YCJan 29th, 2007 - 15:02:15

I totally disagree w/the previous comments. Because if you draw that same anology, then US should move back to Europe and give the land back to the native Indians.
Historically, the textbook in Taiwan did not accurately reflect the true history. The revision was necessary to allow people to reflect on themselves and see who they really are. It did not say we're all Taiwanese. And because the future of Taiwan is uncertain, it is better to put a question mark rather than associate everyone with China in an absolute way.

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Eric LeeJan 30th, 2007 - 15:43:55

If anything, the old text book had even a greater political intervention by the KMT government, that the ROC controls not only Taiwan island but also all of the Mainland China (from KMT's point of view). In contrast, the new text book offers a more up-to-date, a more neutral point of view of the current status of Taiwan.

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Taiwan revises history textbook to show it's not part of China

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