Our Desk | History, lest it be forgotten

Daniel Beitler

With the 50th anniversary this month of the turmoil of the 1-2-3 Incident in Macau, and subsequently the call for the event to be introduced to children’s textbooks, it seems an apt time to question how the 1-2-3 Incident, and other events in the territory, will be taught.

There is not one account of history. Any historian or serious history educator would contend that there are multiple narratives, and their plurality is necessary if we are serious about understanding the past.

The recent announcement of plans for the education authorities of Macau and mainland China to jointly draft history textbooks for Macau – or the standardization of history education – should be an extremely worrying development, considering China’s whitewashing of its past.

That is not to single China out as the only offender. New World navigator Christopher Columbus is revered like a saint despite his unsaintly and barbaric actions, even by his contemporaries’ standards. The British glorification of the ‘empire days’ ignores the blockade of international aid to famine-struck Ireland (itself the result of British policy) and the invention of the world’s first concentration camps during the Boer wars.

These examples are among the most shameful incidents of Anglo history, but they have been largely unknown or repressed for decades. It is only when revisionist theorists challenge mainstream conceptions that events return to the surface to be re-examined.

East Asia lags significantly behind the West in promoting the concept of various historical narratives – or “narrative plurality”. I recently looked through a Japanese history book aimed at young adolescents. Instead of referring to the combatants of World War II as the Allied and Axis powers, the book’s authors preferred to use the terms “nations with resources” and “nations without resources” respectively. This is a very kind (and not an entirely inaccurate) way to label the combatants. Japan is notorious for dismissing its 20th century war crimes, and this denial continues to deteriorate and undermine Japan’s foreign relations.

While the Communist Party (CCP) of the PRC conceded the faults of the Cultural Revolution decades ago, the recent resurgence in anti-foreigner sentiment seems capable of shifting the entire blame of the turmoil to the colonialists. Even the demands in Macau this week for the 1-2-3 Incident to be incorporated into children’s education were notably absent in their criticism of mainland-sponsored imported radicalization.

It is both tragic and arguably undesirable to attempt to suppress narrative plurality, but it is also dangerous when the historical “authority” is an authoritarian dictatorship. In Japan and South Korea it is permissible to challenge the established narrative and to question whether local accounts accurately depict events of the past. The CCP has an especially poor track record, and dissenters are often punished.

Take the example of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression – China’s name for the East Asian Theater of World War II. While the Chinese Civil War was brought to a halt, when the Kuomintang (Nationalists) and the CCP made an alliance to repel the Japanese invasion in 1937, most historical accounts accept that the Kuomintang did the bulk of the fighting, leaving the CCP to the countryside where it strengthened in preparation of the resumption of intra-Chinese hostilities.

A 70th anniversary mainland celebration of the end of that war embittered the Taiwanese last year when it depicted Chinese soldiers in CCP uniforms repelling the Japanese.

That is just one example of what might be called a ‘false narrative’. Though even false narratives have a place in narrative plurality, the freedom to challenge them and propose alternative accounts is limited in China.

The biggest concern is how a standardized textbook might detail the many controversial events from China’s recent past. The Great Leap Forward, where Mao’s refusal to recognize the failure of the campaign resulted in tens of millions of deaths, and the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989, an event only vaguely recalled by young Macau residents, come to mind.