An argument for teaching the history of modern China when this is all over…
I’m writing this blog in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Who knows what things will look like when it is all over. Hopefully, at some point, there will be a return to some sense of normality — children and teachers will return to schools, lessons will take place again and we can go back to the usual trials and tribulations of school life.
One thing that I’ve been thinking, with regards to the post-COVID world of History education, is that I’d like to see a little more attention paid in our curricula to the history of modern China when we’re back up and running.
I currently teach the Edexcel Paper 2 A-level option on Mao’s China, and also participated in the Historical Association Fellowship on the Korean War and produced resources relating to the issue of ‘germ warfare’ allegations made by the Chinese and North Korean governments against the United States. I do not profess to be anything like an expert beyond that — I know little of pre-20th century China at all beyond the episode about Confucius I listened to from the BBC In Our Time programme.
To me, the place of Chinese history in our curriculum, particularly within examined options at GCSE and A-level, is going to become only ever more relevant after all this over, for the following reasons:
1. The problem of COVID originated in China, and solutions will likely be found there too.
China’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, dating back to 2013, has resonances with the Marshall Plan. Now, with China exporting medical personnel and equipment to countries like Italy that are in dire straits over coronavirus, it is likely that China is only going to play a more active role in European economic life. Furthermore, Europe has, from 1914 to 2016, looked west for support. However, the pathetically inadequate response to COVID from the Trump Administration, following on from three years of America First rhetoric, signifies the continuing retreat from the world stage of that country. Therefore, as Britain strikes out in the world after Brexit, it is going to be vital for more of our young people to understand the workings of the modern Chinese state. While all young people likely know about President Trump; the name of President Xi is most probably much less familiar. This probably ought to change. Xi Jinping, of course, is lifting aspects of the Maoist period for his own purposes in present-day China — although don’t expect a Mao-style Cultural Revolution from below, especially as Xi’s own family were victims of that purge.
2. Anti-Chinese racism is likely to be a problem after Coronavirus.
All you need to do is look at the replies to a lot of posts about coronavirus to see a strain of nasty, anti-Chinese racism running through some of them. This of course has been emboldened by the attitudes of the US President. There are over 400,000 people of Chinese ethnic descent, as well as 800,000 who are listed as ‘other Asian’, according to the 2011 census, who live in Britain. Some of these will be children attending our schools. Important in any campaign against racism is education. Helping young people to begin to understand the complexity of the story of China’s past may play a small, long-term role in helping to reduce prejudice and discrimination.
3. China is about to surpass Russia as the longest-lasting Communist state.
In 2024, China will become the country with the longest period of continuous Communist Party rule. This is going to be a big moment of fanfare for China, much as last year’s 70th anniversary celebrations were (and indeed, 2024 will also be the 75th anniversary of the 1949 victory of the Communists in the Civil War). China’s Communist state has, throughout its’ lifespan, defined itself against Russia in a number of ways, whether it be Mao’s attempts to rival Russia’s rapid economic modernisation during the Great Leap Forward, his denouncing of Liu Shaoqi as China’s Khrushchev during the Cultural Revolution, or the fears of the hardliners around Deng Xiaoping that the 1989 Tiananmen protests were analogous to the glasnost and perestroika policies of Gorbachev’s Russia that were precipitating the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. The Russian Revolution is a popular topic for many History Departments at A-level and this development will add another bit of texture to that story.
4. The history of Mao’s China is fundamentally really interesting.
The development of the Communist state in China is one of THE stories of the 20th Century. The Great Leap Forward arguably led to up to 40 million deaths (depending on who’s account you read) while the Cultural Revolution was a profoundly traumatic event which continues to influence modern China today (Frank Dikotter, in his seminal works on Mao’s China, argues that the economic freedoms in China today date back to ‘bottom-up’ changes initiated in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution period). The Long March of the 1930s is one of the foundation myths of modern China (and very much a ‘myth’ if you’ve read Jung Chang’s work on this) while the Tiananmen Square protests represent an alternative spin on the events of 1989 compared to those in Berlin later that year. For our students, it represents a totally different society and culture — one in many ways that feels very present thanks to the Chinese diaspora as well as the prevalence of Chinese-made goods in our economy, but is also totally distant as well.
5. Mao’s China had a bigger global influence than you think.
I’ve just finished reading Julia Lovell’s fantastic global history of Maoism. This book has really helped to transform my understanding of the impact of Maoism both in China and around the world. The book itself presents like a radical alternative version of the GCSE Modern World History course that many of us will be so familiar with from years past, looking at the influence of his ideas in countries ranging from Vietnam and Cambodia, to India, to Zimbabwe and Tanzania, across the Atlantic to Peru and their Shining Path rebel force. Mao was an inspiration for many people in the developing world, as the successful revolutionary leader of a poor, peasant dominated nation that had been a victim of imperialism. For countries across the Third World, Mao’s ideas and the rather crude way in which he could summarise them (‘revolution is not a dinner party’ etc) were a powerful influence on liberation struggles there. He had a romantic appeal to radicals and revolutionaries in the western world, including the Baader Meinhof group in the FRG, the Italian Red Brigades and militant African-American activists like Robert Williams (as well as fringe cult groups across the west).
Again, I appreciate there are a great many things people are looking to include as they continue to develop and diversify their curricula. My hope is that the opportunities to study China will become more abundant in the next round of qualification reform as increasingly, twenty-first century British citizens really ought to know more about it.
