In Taiwan as elsewhere in East Asia fights over history are really all about laying claim to the future. After weeks of protests in Taipei, the capital, hundreds of high-school students and supporters stormed the education ministry on July 31 and staged a sit-in. Their anger was motivated by the China-friendly government’s changes to the school curriculum and history textbooks. They claim the changes are designed to indoctrinate young Taiwanese to support unification with China.
Eventual unification is something Ma Ying-jeou, now in his final year as president of Taiwan, is assumed to espouse. The Kuomintang (KMT), which he leads, fled to Taiwan from China in 1949 after losing the civil war there to the communists. When Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was Taiwan’s dictator, history textbooks insisted that the island was part of China. Taiwan later embraced democracy and once-suppressed notions of a specifically Taiwanese identity flourished. Textbooks adapted. Now once again, President Ma wants textbooks to reflect his party’s roots.
Above all, the new textbooks guidelines recast Japan’s colonial rule from 1895-1945. Unlike many who came to Taiwan with the KMT, Taiwanese with deeper roots on the island often emphasise the Japanese contribution to Taiwan’s modernisation. And even when they acknowledge Japanese colonial cruelty, the violence of Chiang’s regime after Japan’s surrender often overshadowed it. The new guidelines insist that what was known as “Japanese rule” be referred to as “Japanese colonial rule”. But what sticks in the craw of native Taiwanese, given the brutality of Chiang’s dictatorship, is that the KMT’s occupation of Taiwan should be described as a “glorious retrocession”.
On August 3, a confrontation took place between emotional student representatives and the education minister, Wu Se-hwa, who refused to bow to the students’ demands to retract the guidelines and resign. But he did offer a concession in emphasising that high schools could have the freedom to choose textbooks that adhered to either the old guidelines or the new ones. Officials added that the most-contested aspects of the new guidelines would not form part of Taiwan’s national examinations. And Wu promised more transparency in drawing up guidelines in future. On August 4, Taiwan’s parliament also ordered a review of the high-school history curriculum. This has not been enough for the students, who say they will not end their protest until the new guidelines are suspended or revoked.