Portraying “minorities” in Chinese history textbooks of the 1990s and 2000s: the advance and retreat of ethnocultural inclusivity

ABSTRACT

School history textbooks have typically served to reinforce a sense of national identity and national belonging, often through constructing or reinforcing a distinction between the national “self” and foreign “others”. What have often been overlooked in history textbook researches is how ethnic minorities have been portrayed to incorporate them into a multi-ethnic vision of nationality. This paper investigates this issue through comparing the portrayal of minority ethnic groups in two successive editions of China’s most widely used secondary-level history textbooks, published in the 1990s and 2000s. We analyse these changes in the context of broader political and ideological shifts, while also considering the agency of the key editors involved in producing these texts. We find that, rather than exhibiting a steady progression towards greater inclusivity and a more “multi-ethnic” vision of Chineseness, these editions evince a movement away from the latter and back towards a more Han-centric narrative of the national past. We argue that, while shifts in the editorial personnel involved may have contributed to this, a more fundamental factor is the shifting emphasis in ideological or “thought” education in the post-1989 period away from orthodox socialism and towards an increasingly strident and ethnocentric form of patriotism.

KEYWORDS:

• History textbooks
• Chinese ethnic minorities
• nationalism
• national identity

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the helpful feedback from Paul Morris on an early draft of this paper, and the advice of the two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. China has 55 officially recognized minority ethnic groups, mostly identified between the 1950s and 1980s by Soviet-trained groups of scholars. The latest census puts the combined population of these 55 minority ethnic groups at 114 million, 8.49% of the Chinese total. Some “minorities” are (or until recently were) in the majority in the regions they inhabit. In the Tibet Autonomous Region, as of 2010 more than 90% of the population were Tibetan (NBS, 2012).

2. For example, Chu (2015) finds that minority ethnic groups are often considered “traditional” and positioned as “others”, whereas ethnic features of the Han are generally not mentioned in order to normalize them as a non-ethnical identity (like the White).

3. For example, Harrell (1995b) showed that ethnic minority groups in China are often defined as “women, children, and ancient”, while Gladney (1994) argued that the construction of the dominant Han group as “united, monoethnic, and modern” largely depends on the construction of minority ethnic groups as “exotic, colourful, and primitive”.

4. In our analysis we noticed that one particular problem of coding history text is that we ended up with a lot of fragments of data, therefore losing the context of what is said, i.e., the stories or narratives of history. Moreover, we also found that several themes often knotted together into one long account (with coherence and sequence) which made it difficult to categorize.

5. The level of sensitivity is shown in the example of the relatively moderate Uyghur lecturer IIham Tohti at Chinese Minzu University, who was jailed for life for allegedly advocating separatism (ABC News, 2014).

6. Their writings suggest that Wang played a more important role than Zang in compiling textbooks, especially regarding content on “minorities”. For Zang (1990, 2000), such issues appear of only marginal interest – whereas Wang emphasizes that “ethnic issues” were “of great concern to me in compiling textbooks” and has written extensively on this theme (2000, p. 8). We therefore reference Wang’s writings extensively here.

7. Hu Yaobang visited Tibet several times during the 1980s and became aware of the widespread destruction of its culture and heritage during the Cultural Revolution. This seems to have reinforced his belief in the importance of genuine autonomy for Tibet and of respect for the culture and religious beliefs of minority populations.

8. Fei famously proposed a “snowball” metaphor to describe the formation and development of the Chinese nation (中华民族) and regarded the Han (or its predecessor Huaxia group) as “the core of agglomeration” (凝聚核心) of this growing snowball (Fei, 2003, pp. 4, 8, 32).

9. The enactment of the Compulsory Law in 1986 was accompanied by the beginnings of reform to the system for textbook production (see Jones, 2005, p. 83). From 1986 the government initiated small steps towards the decentralization, allowing the authorities in Shanghai to draft their own curriculum and commission their own textbooks (on Shanghai’s limited curricular autonomy, see Vickers & Yang, 2013).

10. Here we translate the term 少数民族 as “minority” or “ethnic minority”, although until the early 2000s the standard translation was the Soviet-style “minority nationality”.

11. Wang (2000, p. 659) wrote that she was initially confused by this dissatisfaction since the Jurchen had been enemies of the Mongols. She realized that this was an expression of a general mood among minority ethnic groups resentful of the dominant Han-centred narrative.

12. Wang majored in History at Peking University in the late 1950s when Jian was the director of the History Faculty. One of the “five famous Marxist historians” (五名家) of “New China”, Jian enjoyed high political status until he was forced to commit suicide early in the Cultural Revolution.

13. RICT refers to the Research Institute of Curriculum and Textbooks (课程教材研究所) within the PEP. The reference here is to an official “in-house” history of the development of history curricula and textbooks from 1949 to 2000.

14. The 1992 textbooks also devoted an entire lesson to “The Peaceful Relations and Conflicts between the Two Han Dynasties and the Hun”.

15. By contrast, textbooks published during the Maoist period tended to discuss non-Han regimes such as the Khitan Liao only in so far as conflict with the Han Chinese regime brought them into the narrative. The 1980s editions had already started to feature more discussion of non-Han “minorities” themselves, though this was generally brief and perfunctory.

16. For example, introducing the famous artists during the Sui and Tang dynasties, the 1992 textbooks added an artist Zhan Ziqian (展子虔) and stated clearly that he is from the Bohai (渤海) group (PEP, 1992b, p. 61).

17. The Yuan established an ethnic hierarchy, theoretically excluding Han from official state positions, which were largely occupied by Uyghurs and Tibetans. While the 1992 texts elsewhere downplayed the issue of class struggle, in discussing this ethnically discriminatory policy class (阶级) was invoked to minimize the extent of inter-ethnic division. It was stressed that while some Han elites gained official positions in the Mongol government, many impoverished Mongols were bankrupted and even enslaved by Han traders, moneylenders and landlords (PEP, 1992b, pp. 113–114).

18. The “national situation” (国情) refers to “the unique vastness and diversity of the population, relative ‘backwardness’, an overriding need for stability to ensure continued economic growth, and the imperative of preserving national unity in the face of various threats” (Vickers, 2009, pp. 61–2).

19. “The General Outline of Strengthening Early Modern and Modern History and National Condition Education in Primary and Secondary Schools” and “Educational Outline of Using History Education for Thought Politics in Primary and Secondary Schools”.

20. For example, History Education and the Importance of Strengthening Education in the National Situation (1991), History Education and National Condition Education (1991) and History Education and Education in the History of the Republic [i.e. the PRC] (1992). Jiang’s letter was quoted at the start of all three papers.

21. When the revised version of the 1992 textbooks was sent to the censorship committee in early 1992, it was approved with various “suggestions” for revision. The first suggested more coverage of the great cultural achievements of ancient China (e.g., in Mathematics) to “strengthen national situation education” (RICT, 2010, p. 464).

22. In early 1989 Lhasa witnessed public protests demanding Tibetan independence, culminating in serious disturbances in early March. Martial law was introduced and maintained for over a year (People’s Daily, 2003). Sautman noted that these disturbances took place “perhaps not coincidentally” soon after a prominent palaeontologist published claims that Tibetans were descendants of Peking Man (1997, p. 92). There were also outbreaks of violence in Xinjiang, beginning with the Urumqi bus bombings of February 1992. A head of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau remembered the early 1990s as a peak time for “terrorist attacks” (People’s Daily, 2014). To counter the threat of “national secessionism” (民族分裂), the CCP ramped up propaganda on “inter-ethnic solidarity”(民族团结). Long deployed as a slogan, from the 1990s this phrase increasingly permeated official discourse on minorities (Bulag, 2002).

23. This campaign extended well beyond the classroom to the media, literature, film and the arts (Vickers, 2009, p. 62). Museums, memorials and tourist sites were designated as “bases for patriotic education”.

24. PEP junior secondary school texts normally divide Chinese history into three major periods: ancient (pre-1840), early modern (1840–1949) and modern (1949-).

25. Qi and Ma were both involved in compiling previous textbook editions, but on aspects (illustrations, early modern Chinese history) peripheral to the portrayal of “minorities”.

26. The seven units on ancient Chinese history are: “The Origins of Chinese Civilisation”, “The Birth of the Country and Social Reform”, “The Foundation of a Unitary Country”, “Divided Regimes and Ethnic Merging”, “A Prosperous and Open Society”, “Moving the Economic Centre to the South and the Development of Ethnics Relationships”, “The Consolidation of a Unitary Multi-ethnic Country and Social Crisis” – reflecting a teleology of progress towards a unitary, multi-ethnic modern Chinese state.

27. The lesson quotes top leaders such as Mao Tze-tung and Sun Yat-sen expressing their reverence for the Yellow Emperor.

28. In a paper on the Sarbi of the Northern Wei, Ma proclaimed that his aim was to support Deng Xiaoping’s claim that there were historical precedents for the “One Country, Two systems” (一国两制) principle proffered as the framework for “reunification” with Hong Kong and Taiwan (2004).

29. In a 2006 interview, Ma fiercely criticized the liberal Chinese historian Yuan Weishi’s article on the nationalist and xenophobic nature of Chinese history textbooks, insisting that “history textbooks are the reflection of the national will” (Lu, 2006).

30. There is no mention of what has been described as the “genocide” of the Mongol tribes of Junggar (准噶尔, in present-day northern Xinjiang) during the 18th-century Qing conquest (see Perdue, 2005).

31. Some coverage of the Hun later in the Han dynasty unit was retained. However, another minority, the Yue introduced in the 1992 textbooks were now also removed from this lesson in 2001-2. The Qin was thus represented as a thoroughly Han state, though the lesson still referred to it as the “first unified and multi-ethnic feudal country” (PEP, 2001–2a, p. 59).

32. The title of the lesson was changed from “Social and Economic Situation in the Five Dynasties, Liao, Song, Xia and Jin” in 1992 to “The Social Customs of the Song Dynasty” and “Moving the [Song] Economic Centre to the South”.

33. Baranovitch’s comments, quoting Bovingdon (2001), on the “oppressive ‘historiographical colonialism’ whereby the Han-dominated state ‘claim[s] the past’ of the non-Han peoples” (2010, p. 114).

34. For example, in the textbook account of Sarbi rule during the Northern Wei (PEP, 1992a, pp. 155–156), discussion of how the Sarbi learnt from the Han was extended in the 2001 edition, even while overall coverage of “minority” cultures and histories was slashed.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fei Yan

Fei Yan is a post-doctoral research fellow at South China Normal University. His research interests include Chinese national identity, citizenship education and education for minority ethnic groups in China.

Edward Vickers

Edward Vickers is Professor of Comparative Education at Kyushu University, Japan, and Secretary-General of the Comparative Education Society of Asia. He is co-author of Education and Society in Post-Mao China (2017) and a coordinating lead author of the UNESCO-MGIEP report Rethinking Schooling: the State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia (2017). He researches the history and politics of education and the relationship between public culture and identity politics across East Asia. His latest book is Remembering Asia's World War Two (2019).