Oh, this one is rich. Despite perpetually haranguing Japan for glossing over its invasion of China in Japanese history textbooks, China is now doing pretty much the same thing in its own history textbooks. The New York Times reports:
So despite China's demands that Japan improve the accuracy of its textbooks, it's now quite clear that accuracy was never its goal. China has no problem with Japanese students learning only a superficial, propagandistic view of history — so long as it's China's view. And this from the country that lectures the world against interfering in its "internal affairs".
When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization.Of course, China will still make sure its students learn to hate the Japanese. The Times article notes that "The junior high school textbook still uses boilerplate idioms to condemn Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930’s and includes little about Tokyo’s peaceful, democratic postwar development" and "will do little to assuage Japanese concerns that Chinese imbibe hatred of Japan from a young age."
Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once — in a chapter on etiquette.
...[T]he Long March, colonial oppression of China and the Rape of Nanjing are taught only in a compressed history curriculum in junior high.
So despite China's demands that Japan improve the accuracy of its textbooks, it's now quite clear that accuracy was never its goal. China has no problem with Japanese students learning only a superficial, propagandistic view of history — so long as it's China's view. And this from the country that lectures the world against interfering in its "internal affairs".
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