Hong Kong’s Ming Pao Daily News found that some upper primary general knowledge books changed “the Republic of China government moved to Taiwan” to “the Chinese Nationalist Party moved to Taiwan”.
The 2019 edition of Hong Kong’s “Today’s New Frontier of General Knowledge (3rd Edition) Grade 6 3 Changes in China”, in the chapter “A Period of Internal and External Difficulties”, gives an account of the civil war between the Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of China, originally reading: “Finally, the Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong, won and declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. The Republic of China, led by Chiang Kai-shek, was moved to Taiwan”. The errata on the publisher’s website in October last year stated that the last sentence of the above paragraph was changed to “The Chinese Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek moved to Taiwan”.
According to Ming Pao, there are currently four sets of elementary school general knowledge textbooks on the market in Hong Kong that have been submitted for review. The publishers will announce the updated contents of the textbooks on their websites in a timely manner, and list them in the form of “errata” for future reprinting and revision. Ming Pao’s report is based on the “errata” listed by the publishers.
In its reply to Ming Pao, the Hong Kong Education Bureau said that the textbook updates, publishers continue to optimize textbooks in accordance with the principles of correctness, completeness and objectivity and impartiality, to the Education Bureau in the form of “errata” proposed content revisions.
Some scholars in the Hong Kong commentary sector believe that the revision of textbooks shows that Hong Kong also follows the Mainland in its view of history. East Asian international relations scholar Lam Chuen-chung told Ming Pao that in the mainland’s view of history, after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the “government of the Republic of China” could not be called a regime.
The Taiwan Work Office of the CPC Central Committee, the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee, and the Foreign Propaganda Office of the CPC Central Committee issued the “Opinions on the Correct Use of Taiwan-related Propaganda Terms” in 2002, the first of which states that the regime in Taiwan after October 1, 1949, should be referred to as the “Taiwan authorities” or “Taiwan-related parties”, “Taiwan side”, do not use the “Republic of China”, and all do not use the “Republic of China The “Republic of China” is not used, nor is the “Republic of China” chronology used.
Textbooks delete negative descriptions of the Qing court
A reporter from Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper has not long ago found that history textbooks deleted negative descriptions of the Qing government. A week ago, a reporter pointed out that the old history textbook of the Modern Education and Research Society Level 2 mentioned that the Qing court “regarded itself as a heavenly dynasty and regarded foreign trade as a means to ‘benefit distant people'” and other negative descriptions were deleted. In addition, the “teaching memo” used by Hong Kong secondary school teachers contains the following text: “Although Britain was dissatisfied with the Qing court’s imposition of various trade restrictions and was unsuccessful in asking the Qing court to improve trading conditions, these problems were not directly related to the outbreak of the Opium War.”
The article also cites the example of the new Second Year Teacher’s Book published by the Hong Kong Education Book Company, which removes the description of the Qing court’s “closed-door policy” from the old edition, and the first item in the background of the war is “opium endangered the country’s livelihood.
The second edition of the Teachers’ Book published by the Mentor Press in 2020 did not mention the trade restrictions of the Qing court, saying that the background of the Opium War was that British merchants had to buy a lot of tea and silk from China, and a lot of silver flowed into China, so the British side imported opium into China to balance the trade interests.
The old textbook of the Modern Education and Research Society asked students to evaluate Lin Zexu’s ban on smoking, but the new edition uses charts to describe the amount of opium imported into China during the Qing Dynasty and teaches students to study statistics; the old textbook of the Education Book Press also asked students to think about China’s trade policy at that time, but the new edition asks students to analyze the impact of the unequal treaties on the Chinese economy at that time.
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