Thread: Taiwan-centric textbook curriculum about to be introduced

The island nation's 50 years of Japanese rule is no longer an "occupation," but an "administrative period."

That's like refering to the concentration camp victims as "guests" of the Nazi regime.

gunnut,

That's like refering to the concentration camp victims as "guests" of the Nazi regime.

to be fair to the japanese, not -quite- that bad...at least if you were part of the han ethnicity on the island. this was thanks to japan's early imperial ethos , when they still believed that han chinese were still "brothers fallen on hard times" instead of sub-human animals later on.

so, if you were (especially if you were fairly well off), then you got decent schooling (the best schools were reserved for japanese colonists, of course), a growing economy, a decent transportation system, and mere second-rate status. my grandparents on my father's side learned japanese before they learned mandarin or taiwanese.

if you were aborigine, on the other hand, yeah, it was almost that bad, as you were hunted down fairly mercilessly, tortured, shot, and occasionally rounded up/enslaved, as the japanese did in korea and china later.

what i find absolutely bewildering about the pro-independence factions is that in their belief that taiwan is seperate from china, they want to deny ANY connection with china at all, to the point where they are willing to identify even with the japanese. this is especially ironic considering that most of the pro-independence people come from the very aboriginal tribes that japan used to prosecute the worst!!

in fact, a fairly popular TV series in taiwan back in 2003-2004 was this one:

http://th.gio.gov.tw/show.cfm?news_id=16424

YouTube - seediqbale賽德克。巴èÂ�Å

(warning: a tad graphic)

it's a trailer, so one doesn't really need to know either chinese or taiwanese to get what's going on

Originally Posted by gunnut

That's like refering to the concentration camp victims as "guests" of the Nazi regime.

You can't really compare Nazi atrocities to Japanese ones. Chinese empire-builders did everything the Japanese did - and worse. Like I've mentioned previously, the rape of Nanking is merely the one of about half-a-dozen such sackings - the rest occurred during Chinese rule. Like the Chinese before and after them, the Japanese killed and tortured to ensure submission - the Nazis killed to extinguish sub-human races.

are you done, japanese apologist?

You can't really compare Nazi atrocities to Japanese ones. Chinese empire-builders did everything the Japanese did - and worse. Like I've mentioned previously, the rape of Nanking is merely the one of about half-a-dozen such sackings - the rest occurred during Chinese rule. Like the Chinese before and after them, the Japanese killed and tortured to ensure submission - the Nazis killed to extinguish sub-human races.

yes, the chinese empire-builders sure had the likes of unit 731, 516, 543, 1644, 1855, 200, 9420...of which some of the largest (such as 731) were located in manchuria, which the japanese were in virtual control of from 1905 onwards. sure, the japanese killed and tortured to ensure submission, but i assure you that the japanese from the 1930s on regarded the chinese as a sub-human race, quite worthy of extermination.

i'm really quite tired of your attempts to minimize japanese atrocities and to compare them to the actions of the chinese. it is the same as trying to compare the holocaust to the japanese internment camps. if you had been spewing this type of trash regarding the nazis, i'm pretty damn sure you would have been banned from WAB already.

The Nazis, the Japanese, and the Chinese are capable of doing human rights violations, ie atocities. I believe Japan and Germany have been forced to see the error of their ways. China on the otherhand, is as arrogant as ever in its perceived rights to trample on the rights of others in a most brutal fashion, and is infact, by far, the greatest threat to present day Taiwan. The independance of Taiwan and Tibet are absolutely no threat to China except for the overinflated Chinese ego. It is high time for China to do the right thing and let those countries go.

bonehead,

you're seeing it from the wrong angle. it's not a question of "those countries" being a threat to chinese national security (ie invading), but the chinese fear that the loss of such places with so many historical ties to the "chinese motherland" would be a pre-cursor to the split up of other provinces.

it's not an altoghther irrational fear. if taiwan and tibet leave, then what of xinjiang (with even weaker historical ties)? then comes inner mongolia, and manchuria, etc etc...and we all saw what happened to the chinese people the last time china was fragmented.

As a rank outsider I think that because there are people in Taiwan who are from the Mainland (having come with Chiang Kai Shek), the effort to wipe away the mainland history maybe difficult for these people and their progenies to accept.

Would I be correct in my surmise?

ray,

not just the mainlanders (called waishengren/外省人, literally "people from outside provinces", whom make up a small percentage of taiwan's population), but also for many of the han chinese whom were already living on the island. for example, my father's side of the family can trace its roots back in taiwan from the early 1600s, and they identify far, far more closely with "chinese" culture and history rather than, say, aborigine/"native" culture.

Originally Posted by Zhang Fei

You can't really compare Nazi atrocities to Japanese ones. Chinese empire-builders did everything the Japanese did - and worse.

And that makes what the Japanese did right...how?

Originally Posted by Zhang Fei

Like I've mentioned previously, the rape of Nanking is merely the one of about half-a-dozen such sackings - the rest occurred during Chinese rule.

Would you like to provide some examples? Were any of them in the 20th century? Were any of them committed against anyone other than Chinese?

Originally Posted by Zhang Fei

Like the Chinese before and after them, the Japanese killed and tortured to ensure submission - the Nazis killed to extinguish sub-human races.

So killing and torturing for submission is OK. But you draw the line at extermination? Got it.

How about extinguishing human races? Is that OK? Are only sub-human races not OK to exterminate?

Originally Posted by gunnut

And that makes what the Japanese did right...how? Would you like to provide some examples? Were any of them in the 20th century? Were any of them committed against anyone other than Chinese? So killing and torturing for submission is OK. But you draw the line at extermination? Got it. How about extinguishing human races? Is that OK? Are only sub-human races not OK to exterminate?

Highlighting what others have done is important. Otherwise, history becomes a matter of highlighting all the good things that come to mind when you think about China and pointing out all the bad things when you think about Japan. What Chinese and Japanese empire-builders did is a matter of historical record. Looking up Chinese massacres isn't all that tough*. The problem is that you haven't looked very hard. I understand that your Chinese background leads you to be defensive about China. Let me suggest that you look beyond that background and truly join the West by closely examining the sins of your ethnic forebears as Westerners have done with respect to theirs.

* Simple logic ought to have suggested to you that a country China's size - with no record of democratic rule and a mishmash of hundreds of spoken languages - can only have been welded together using extreme violence and cruelty.

Tsai Wei-chun on history as analysis vs history as tribalistic point-scoring:

Several days ago, a reporter interviewed me about the elimination of the 'Nanking massacre' from the new edition of high-school history textbooks. Yesterday, the news came out with some sensationalistic headlines. I was interviewed by several more reporters. It was quite unexpected for our normally tranquil school community to experience such a commotion.

The questions were basically these kinds: Do you feel that the textbook should eliminate the narrative on the Nanking massacre? Will the elimination of the description of the Nanking massacre affect the historical memories of the students? The logic behind these questions is: historical memory is related to history education, and history education can strengthen or weaken historical memories. To put it more explicitly, history education is linked to national self-identity. My thoughts were quite the opposite: it is the political positions, the national self-identity and the popular feelings that are influencing history education, instead of history education changing political positions, national self-identity, popular feelings or historical memories.

Although everybody says that politics should not intervene in education, the fact is that everybody uses politics to influence history education. The blues and the greens each have their historical viewpoints that they want to influence history education with. Many citizens use their own beliefs about politics, nation and people to construct a "correct" history education Even the history scholars put on a cloak of history professionalism (when they don't understand anything about history education) to conceal their own political positions and freely discuss the so-called history education and textbooks (in Europe and America, "history" and "history education" are two different academic fields).

During the course of teaching, the few lines in the textbook that describes the Nanking massacre might as well as not be there. The teacher is usually pressed by the schedule and most of them can only just mention it briefly. Even if the textbook does not have it, the teacher can design a related activity. The only people who think that it makes a difference are politicians, scholars and citizens who have accepted a certain set of history and therefore this offends their "historical sentiments."

Are there history textbooks that are less subjected to intervention? Let me give you an example: in England, there are all sorts of textbooks and the topics are chosen freely and not subjected to review. One of the history textbooks is titled Holocaust (2003). Through many Nazi documents, contemporary descriptions, news reports and recollections by massacre survivors in the 1930's, the textbook editors came up with many questions that they want the students to answer after reading the historical materials. The headlines in the whole book are always followed by a question mark, and there are no single fixed correct answers to those questions. The students go through this whole book on this one theme in order to enter this unfamiliar world. That was how they come into grasp with the conditions of the past era and thereby reduce the prejudices that contemporary people necessarily have. But not all English students get to read this book Different classes can attempt to understand the "past" though various historical topics. There are no compulsory topics that must be discussed.

Should the Nanking massacre be discussed? If you want to discuss it, you should spend a lot of time on it and enter into the conditions in 1937. If you don't want to talk about that, you can talk about the massacre that occurred when Zeng Guoquan intruded into the capital (Nanjing) of the Celestial Kingdom (in 1864) and slaughtered just as many people. You can talk about the forgotten Armenian genocide of 1915 in which one million people died. Or you don't have to talk about any massacre at all. To use the logic in the textbooks to talk about the Nanking massacre is even less effective than bedside tales, television drama series, movies or news reports. So what if you want to talk about it? And so what if you don't? Even if you did, how will the students deal with the myriad of different descriptions of the Nanking massacre that exists in society?

Are we treating the Nanking massacre as a political symbol, or as a piece of history that needs to be seriously understood? England's top history education scholar Peter Lee said: "History is useful in that it can change how we look at the world." Whether the Nanking massacre is brought up is not the important point. The issue is whether we have reached a conclusion already or we really want to understand the historical incident known as the Nanking massacre.

Originally Posted by astralis

are you done, japanese apologist? yes, the chinese empire-builders sure had the likes of unit 731, 516, 543, 1644, 1855, 200, 9420...of which some of the largest (such as 731) were located in manchuria, which the japanese were in virtual control of from 1905 onwards. sure, the japanese killed and tortured to ensure submission, but i assure you that the japanese from the 1930s on regarded the chinese as a sub-human race, quite worthy of extermination.

i'm really quite tired of your attempts to minimize japanese atrocities and to compare them to the actions of the chinese. it is the same as trying to compare the holocaust to the japanese internment camps. if you had been spewing this type of trash regarding the nazis, i'm pretty damn sure you would have been banned from WAB already.

I think you're confusing the Japanese view that a nation that was still fighting an active guerrilla and conventional war against them wasn't entitled to any rights with the Nazi view that entire peoples were to be plowed under, whether they were willing to pledge loyalty to the German state or not. Nazi policy was that the mere existence of Jews was a blot upon the earth. Hitler had Jews systematically removed from his military and gassed them along with their family members. The Japanese did no such thing with the Chinese who were willing to become officials of the Japanese empire.

It is true that the Japanese did view the Chinese as inferior - but that was their view with respect to Caucasians and every other non-Japanese ethnic group.* They tested biological and chemical weapons on Chinese. But they also did so on Allied prisoners of war of all races. (Some American prisoners were vivisected. The vast majority were not. Ditto with Chinese and every variety of Asian and European prisoners). It had nothing to do with any kind of exterminationist principle - they simply conducted experiments on a sampling of people whom they had in their power. The fact is that at most, a few hundred thousand Chinese civilians were killed in massacres during WWII, whereas six million Jews were gassed in death camps. Out of a total world population of about twelve million. The two events are simply not comparable in scope or scale, notwithstanding the remarkable Chinese capacity for half-truths, maudlin self-pity and exaggerated self-importance.

* That was also the Caucasian and Chinese view with respect to foreigners, and probably just about any ethnic group since man began to band together in tribes.

Originally Posted by astralis

bonehead,

you're seeing it from the wrong angle. it's not a question of "those countries" being a threat to chinese national security (ie invading), but the chinese fear that the loss of such places with so many historical ties to the "chinese motherland" would be a pre-cursor to the split up of other provinces.

it's not an altoghther irrational fear. if taiwan and tibet leave, then what of xinjiang (with even weaker historical ties)? then comes inner mongolia, and manchuria, etc etc...and we all saw what happened to the chinese people the last time china was fragmented.

Nope. China likes to piss on other countries and the idea of one "getting away" would be like the little country pissing on China. This is about ego and pride. Nothing more.

bonehead,

Nope. China likes to piss on other countries and the idea of one "getting away" would be like the little country pissing on China. This is about ego and pride. Nothing more.

thank you for your refreshing and complex analysis, wherein 1.1 billion han chinese are egomaniacs, either by nature or because they were all brainwashed by the all-powerful CCP.

zhang,

The Japanese did no such thing with the Chinese who were willing to become officials of the Japanese empire.

this explains the foreign slavery that powered the japanese industries in korea and on the home islands, yes? or the japanese attempts in korea at banning korean, forcing koreans to take on japanese names, etc?

that there were chinese officials running puppet regimes (NOT parts of the japanese empire proper) does not negate the fact that in the eyes of the japanese, they were sub-human, fit for slavery at whim. this was seen in southeast asia, especially. entire people would be occupied, and then suddenly large portions of the populace were enslaved after the initial slaughter.

in my original post, too, my point wasn't trying to say that the japanese instituted a deliberate policy of complete extermination. notice my post to gunnut earlier regarding japanese policies on taiwan. no, the japanese practiced SELECTED extermination. certainly one of their policies, as found out by allied investigators after the war, was to "reduce the population" of china, and thereby bring down its power, as well as make china more pliable to fit under the system of japanese economic slavery.

They tested biological and chemical weapons on Chinese. But they also did so on Allied prisoners of war of all races.

there is a difference between mere racism and the extreme form of it practiced by the japanese during WWII. you cannot merely brush it away with the idea that "everyone does this".

WAR / Japanese soldiers finally tell their story / Hell in the Pacific -- from vivisection to cannibalism


"The fact that Japanese military training taught recruits that the Chinese were worth less than animals is cited: "We Japanese all thought about the Chinese the same way -- as subhuman scum," says Yoshio Tsuchiya.

This does not, however, explain the sadistic glee that the men remember experiencing while committing the atrocities. "I lost my humanity. . . . The more I killed, the more I would enjoy it," remembers one man."

the fact is that at most, a few hundred thousand Chinese civilians were killed in massacres during WWII, whereas six million Jews were gassed in death camps. Out of a total world population of about twelve million. The two events are simply not comparable in scope or scale, notwithstanding the remarkable Chinese capacity for half-truths, maudlin self-pity and exaggerated self-importance.

they are certainly comparable in scope when one deals with absolute numbers. the number of deaths caused by the japanese invasion far exceeded a "few hundred thousand".

but i see what you're getting at. in trying to compare the Jewish Holocaust on a relative scale with what happened in china, the only way you would be 'comfortable' with the idea that china went through a similar Holocaust is if the chinese had suffered something on the level of 250 million deaths. so of course, because the chinese did not suffer such a level of casualties, they are guilty (as a race, of course) of harboring 'half-truths, maudlin self-pity and exaggerated self-importance.'

that is disgusting.