CHINA: Reading the Lessons of History – Selectively

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Dec 19 2006 (IPS) - Poised to become the world’s next superpower, China has begun examining the rise and fall of other great nations in the hope of drawing lessons from their histories. There is one chapter that is being skipped though-China’s own.

While China’s economy has matured rapidly over the last 20 years of market reforms and now ranks fourth in the world, the official history of modern China – taught to more than a billion people, remains largely unrevised and dominated by communist dogma. As China’s global influence rises, experts begin to ponder the consequences of nurturing a nation on a censored version of its own past.

Sizeable chunks of China’s recent history, like the reasons for the outbreak and the consequences of the ‘Great Proletarian Revolution’, or the mass famine during the ‘Great Leap Forward’, which may have claimed as many as 30 million lives, remain censored or unknown to the public. While researchers continue to probe, much of their work appears only in Hong Kong or Taiwan, or is never published.

Fearing scrutiny of its political mistakes, the ruling Communist Party prefers to make people think about China’s future greatness rather than its past calamities. A new documentary, aired on the Chinese Central Television this month, ”The Rise of the Great Nations”, does exactly that.

It examines the rise of nine world powers – from the ascent of the Portuguese empire in the 15th century to the current world dominance of the United States, in the hope of defining what made these nations succeed. While China is not featured among these world powers, the documentary promotes themes of greatness and the importance of soft power that current Chinese leaders are hoping to publicise at home.

Even though it was commissioned by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the documentary leaves behind the Marxist perspective in presenting history and concentrates on the ways the great nations of the world built on their soft power.

Rather than emphasising the sheer coercion of imperial powers as orthodox Chinese history books do, the programme zooms on the countries’ abilities to influence others by the attractiveness of their ideas, systems and culture.

”As China opens up to the outside world, we need a more rational understanding of the world,” Ren Xue’an, chief producer of the series said in an interview with the China Daily.

When introducing Britain and its Industrial Revolution, the film devotes time to the country’s great scientists Newton and Watt, and its economic genius Adam Smith in an apparent tribute to economic progress. The segment featuring the U.S. highlights the achievements of president Franklin Roosevelt in preserving ”national unity” – a core tenet of the Chinese Communist Party itself, as it vows to pursue reunification with the island of Taiwan.

The 12-part documentary has proved so popular with audiences that after airing it twice back-to-back on the Central Chinese Television (CCTV), it is now being broadcast by local TV networks.

”It is great to see how ideas, philosophy and culture were very important for the rise of the world powers,” wrote one anonymous netizen on Internet bulletin board, ”yet it is a mistake to believe that they became so great without having awesome military strength.”

”We need to undo the influence of our Confucian heritage in thinking that dutifully pursuing knowledge is everything,” wrote another one. ”The examples of the U.S. and Japan show that only by fully embracing technology and science can a country achieve great power”.

The series’ recipe of extrapolating scenarios for China’s future rise has stirred just enough debate about how important the soft power of a country can be or whether economic strength is viable without military power. The film does so without raising controversial questions about the lack, or importance, of honest history.

The last attempt of China soul-searching to be broadcast on state television was 18 years ago. A six-part television series entitled He Shang, or the Yellow River Elegy, caused an immediate national sensation when it was broadcast in 1988 and consequently banned.

The controversial programme suggested that Chinese civilisation, which was shaped by the slow, unchanging course of the Yellow River, has created an ultra stable and oppressive ”feudal” political culture. The West by contrast, was presented as enlightened by science and democracy. A change was called for.

Many party conservatives believe that the heated debates that followed the ban of He Shang later influenced pro-democracy students in their decision to march to Tiananmen square and demand political reform. One of the veteran party leaders, Wang Zhen, is said to have labelled the documentary ”cultural nihilism” and accused it of advocating wholesale Westernisation.

”The Rise of the Great Nations” never crosses into such un-chartered territories. In the words of Ren, the producer, the documentary was simply a ”search for answers” to what constitutes a great power and how does a nation become one.

Exorcising the ghosts of the past and allowing any accounts of sensitive historical periods are not among the recommended ways in the film. The Communist party still fears that any questioning of its past could reopen old scars and lead to renewed calls for political reforms, say intellectuals here.

”You start questioning things, who knows where it will lead? One question leads to another one and there is no end to it”, said Li Datong who was dismissed as an editor of the weekly magazine Bingdian (Freezing Point) earlier this year for running an essay criticising nationalism in Chinese history books.