Chinese intellectuals since the late Qing have considered nationalism as key to repelling foreign invasions and maintaining China's full sovereignty. This belief was also maintained by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Nationalism and a nationalist worldview were vigorously promoted by the authorities via all possible channels, including social education tools, such as newspapers, films, songs and mass activities, and schools. This article deals with school education and chooses textbooks in particular to examine the worldview of the PRC from 1949 to 1966. Compared with other written forms, textbooks deserve more attention because students are required to learn many of the texts by heart. Authorities can more effectively instil the “correct ideology” into young minds by the careful selection and manipulation of the content of textbooks, as indeed the CCP did. Therefore, Althusser's theory of the ideological state apparatus can be applied in this case to school textbooks.Footnote 1
Studies on China's textbooks by Robert Culp, Alisa Jones and Edward Vickers all reveal the surprising continuity of nationalism from the Republican period right through to the reform era of the PRC. The textbooks focus on the need for a strong national consciousness in order to obtain full sovereignty, to save China from foreign intervention and to make China an independent and strong player in the world community.Footnote 2 By comparing textbooks produced under the CCP regime with those produced under Kuomintang (KMT) rule in Nanjing, this article emphasizes both the continuities and changes, and in particular sheds new light on the shifting content of nationalism.
Owing to the very changeable political climate of Maoist China, the CCP worldview shifted from the concept of “two camps” – capitalism versus socialism – to that of “three worlds,” with the US and the USSR in the first world, the other capitalist countries in the second, and all other countries in the third, with China leading the struggle against the first world. The CCP's nationalist worldview, i.e. anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, revolved mainly around Sino-Soviet relations, rather than China's relationship with the US. The changing content of textbooks, closely intertwined with politics, reveals the CCP's shifting perceptions of the outside world and China's place in it. Most importantly, the shift reflects how the CCP strived to become the true bearer of orthodox Marxism and grew in confidence as well as ambition to be one of the major powers in the world.
This article examines the evolution of the CCP's worldview through the lens of textbooks for both primary and middle schools (zhongxue 中学)Footnote 3 that focus on 20th-century world events. It only deals with textbooks for Han Chinese as those produced for ethnic minorities involve more complicated issues which are impossible to elaborate on in this article.Footnote 4 Previous research has mainly depended on Chinese history and political education textbooks in order to show how official ideology was reflected in school books. Other subjects, such as languages, world history, world geography and even arithmetic, have largely been ignored.Footnote 5 I use these textbooks to explore how the CCP promoted its new worldview and how it constructed nationalism. I also explore the role the Party and its policies played in the production of textbooks.
Finally, the article demonstrates that the radical expressions widely used throughout the Cultural Revolution began to appear in textbooks published at the time of the outbreak of the Korean War. These expressions have not been studied in the previous research on textbooks. The language became more and more vituperative as political movements gained momentum and culminated in the Cultural Revolution. It is, therefore, fair to say that cultivation of “the revolutionary successors” began in the early 1950s.
From Revising Many Textbooks to Issuing One Unified Edition
During Mao's era, virtually everything was politicized, including textbooks. According to the textbook editors, “No matter what the subject, they all have to accomplish the task of political education.”Footnote 6 Immediately after the establishment of the PRC, Lu Dingyi 陆定一, head of the Central Propaganda Department, announced that textbooks had to be under state supervision in order to ensure that their contents accorded with state policy.Footnote 7 In order to control textbook writing, the Department was charged with closely monitoring the publication process. During the last few years of the civil war, it had assembled a group of experienced editors to revise textbooks, particularly in the fields of political thought and Chinese history. On 8 April 1949, the Committee for Editing and Censoring Textbooks (Jiaokeshu bianshen weiyuanhui 教科书编审委员会) was founded in Beijing, headed by the renowned writer and editor, Ye Shengtao 叶圣陶, and staffed with many other anti-KMT or left-leaning intellectuals. In order to ensure they had the proper political consciousness, the Central Propaganda Department ordered all members of the committee to study two key documents on writing history, Dialectical Materialism and Political Economy.Footnote 8 As political campaigns intensified in the early 1950s, all editors had to undergo further and more frequent sessions of thought reform. Furthermore, the Party founded the People's Education Press (Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe 人民教育出版社) (PEP) and placed it directly under the supervision of the Central Propaganda Department in order to centralize and control textbook production, publication and distribution nationally.
In addition to Chinese history and political thought, the authorities also turned their attention to Chinese language teaching. Ye Shengtao describes how the editing group was organized and who participated in the process. In general, editors could only change the format or polish the language as the contents were subject to strict Party control.Footnote 9 As time went by, the CCP continued to maintain a tight grip on textbook writing and repeatedly imposed rigid censorship to ensure that texts were in line with Party policy, even during the relatively lax years of 1956 and 1961, as described by Dai Botao 戴伯韬, the chief editor of the PEP (1954–1966).Footnote 10
In contrast, editors under KMT rule in Nanjing had more space to write owing to the relatively loose ideology and party control. In guidelines issued in 1929, the KMT stated that national education should be based on Sun Yat-senism. This is generally considered the beginning of KMT “partifed education” (danghua jiaoyu 党化教育). As long as editors paid lip service to the guidelines, the authorities did not closely check the contents.Footnote 11 For instance, the editorial outline of one eight-volume Chinese textbook claimed that it fully conformed with Sun Yat-senism in order to evade censorship. In fact, the percentage related to the KMT or its ideology was extremely low. The editors simply chose material which they considered suitable for learning Chinese, without any reference to the KMT ideology. If such textbooks had been published under CCP rule, the editors would have faced severe consequences.Footnote 12
The first new textbooks on Chinese, history and geography for primary school were published in the PRC in the autumn of 1950. The editors invited readers' comments and later published them in Renmin ribao. All discussions were held under the nationalist rubric. Only minor criticisms could be made concerning style (classic or modern Chinese, translation or native language), the proportion of patriotic content, or how well Marxism-Leninism was applied in the texts.Footnote 13 Therefore, editors under the Communist regime had little room to manoeuvre and were unlikely to claim that their textbooks adhered to official ideology if that was not the case, unlike the editors under the Nanjing regime.
As PEP was unable to produce a brand new set of textbooks immediately, the authorities adopted textbooks from the pre-1949 CCP-occupied areas and some “progressive” ones from Shanghai for the humanities subjects. The key criterion was “political correctness.” However, the authorities soon realized that even these texts required extensive revisions. For example, they criticized Foreign Geography, edited by Wei Xiyu 韦息予, for failing to distinguish between the capitalist and communist camps adequately and for not emphasizing that the Soviet Union was the most progressive country in the world. Many sections discussed the USSR, the US and Britain together, thus blurring the boundary between friend and foe.Footnote 14 In other words, ideology and clear differentiation between the two camps became the key standard for evaluating new textbooks.
Owing mainly to its policy of “leaning towards one side,” the CCP borrowed heavily from the Soviet system when it came to creating new texts. Both had a centralized publisher to oversee textbook production and distribution, and demanded that the writing of texts and teaching strictly adhere to a teaching outline. The CCP shared the Soviet view of dividing the world into two camps, glorifying the revolutionary, worker and peasant movements and vilifying bourgeois culture. Even before the CCP had won the civil war, it had begun preparations to translate Soviet textbooks on world history and world economic geography.Footnote 15 Since Marx's historical materialism was one of the keys to understanding the world, Economic Geography was added to the curriculum. These practices were a huge departure from those followed under the KMT regime. Although by 1953 the PEP had published several textbooks of the first set for elementary and middle schools, it had not had sufficient time to produce a new Modern World History for senior high school. Therefore, in 1953, a Chinese translation of a Soviet textbook, Modern Soviet History, was used as the national text.Footnote 16 It was only possible to use a single country's history to represent all world history during the peak years of China's learning from the Soviet Union.
In 1954, the authorities reaffirmed that all textbooks had to be published by the state publishers. Those published by private presses could not be reprinted once they had sold out.Footnote 17 By 1956, the PEP had completed rewriting and publishing the first series of textbooks on all subjects and it became the only publisher in the PRC to produce, print and distribute textbooks nationally. The process of overhauling school textbooks in line with CCP ideology was thus accomplished.
When the Great Leap Forward (GLF) started in 1958, the CCP authorities criticized the PEP for failing to publish texts of an adequate quality and quantity and for failing to keep up with current events. In order to shorten the school year so as to combine education with labour, and to reform the curricula, a “National Education Revolution” was declared. The CCP allowed local institutions or teachers to write their own texts. However, in many cases it was the students who collectively wrote the texts, which were of poor quality.Footnote 18 As a result, in May 1959, the CCP decided to revert to central supervision of a single national curriculum. In keeping with the spirit of the GLF, the new set of books published in 1961 did not include ancient or medieval history, which were considered useless, and the language texts relied heavily on contemporary political jargon.
Immediately after the GLF, the Ministry of Education planned to compile yet another set of textbooks on all subjects in order to correct its overly zealous spirit, but before the revisions could be completed, politics intervened once more. In early 1964, Mao Zedong ordered a shortened academic year and the reduction of the curriculum by half. Accordingly, the PEP published another set of texts for the 12-year school programme. The PEP editors at the time considered this series the best among those published since 1949 as it had fewer political slogans, a broader coverage and clearer language. Unfortunately, before it had been fully published, the Cultural Revolution began. The authorities were unable to carry out the policy of a unified curriculum with standard texts and instead let the provinces compile their own “revolutionary textbooks.” It was not until 1978 that the PEP resumed publication of a single national edition for school texts.
Two Rival Camps Led by the USSR and the USA
World geography textbooks under the KMT in Nanjing generally described the world according to its physical distance from China. An exceptional case might be Zheng Chang's 郑昶 work which divided the world into colonizers and the colonized from an imperialist angle, but not from a Marxist class struggle aspect.Footnote 19 Although textbooks written during the Republican period might point to American imperialism invading Latin America,Footnote 20 they did not portray the US as China's main enemy. Such views were shared not only by editors, but also by many ordinary people. Since the US never occupied Chinese territory, many Chinese tended to have a relatively better impression of the US than of the other Western powers. Also, many Chinese intellectuals were educated in the US and thus had pro-American views. However, many Chinese considered the USSR as an enemy. Tsarist Russia occupied a huge area of Chinese territory, and many people resented the brutality of the Soviet soldiers when they invaded Manchuria in 1945. After 1949, the CCP faced the daunting challenge of reversing people's perceptions of friend and foe. The Party had to mobilize all means to promote the policy of leaning towards the Soviet Union,Footnote 21 and these certainly included textbooks.
According to the CCP's new ideology, the world was divided into two polarized camps: the capitalist countries, headed by the PRC's arch-enemy, the US; and the socialist countries, headed by its close ally, the USSR. The provisional standard elementary school curriculum on world history highlighted the growing strength of the socialist camp, focusing on the inevitable liberation of all colonies that would lead to the obliteration of the aggressively imperialist camp.Footnote 22 To expound this point, geography textbooks illustrated more clearly the two-camp issue because the subject required the examination of all continents and countries and the authorities demanded an emphasis on current international affairs.
For example, in 1950, a widely-used Foreign Geography devoted two entire chapters to the Soviet Union's role as the leader of the whole world. The editor arranged the rest of the countries according to which camp they belonged to and by their geographic distance from China. He introduced a new category entitled “Countries of New Democracies or People's Democracies,” i.e. Mongolia, North Korea, North Vietnam and the Eastern European countries, as opposed to the “old democracies” manipulated by capitalists. The 1953 edition merged two volumes into one and divided the world by political ranking, starting with the leader of the socialist camp, the USSR, and followed by people's democracies in Asia and then in Europe, and finally the capitalist countries. The US, as the leader of the capitalist camp and the arch-enemy of the socialist camp, was relegated to the last chapter. In order to help students to understand the history of the two camps, its last section contrasted world affairs before and after the October Revolution of 1917; of the seven strong imperialist powers in existence prior to the First World War, only the US remained. It had become the head of the reactionary camp as a result of reckless exploitation and its monopoly over capital.Footnote 23
In contrast, the October Revolution produced the USSR, the first country to be ruled by the broad masses. After the Second World War, new people's democracies appeared one by one in Eastern Europe and Asia. They belonged to the socialist, democratic and peace-loving camp. Although their development could not equal that of the USSR, they all moved in the same direction: abolishing private ownership, terminating the class system and moving forward in brotherhood. Together they occupied a quarter of the world's land and comprised a third of the world's population in a vast swath from Europe to Asia. This camp included all the colonies and peoples suppressed by imperialism. The more the US enslaved people, the more active the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggle for liberation became. The imperialist camp would ultimately collapse because it was detached from the masses. It was supported by the reactionary ruling classes rather than the masses. People longed for peace, democracy and happiness, but the reactionary camp gave them only war, suppression and exploitation.Footnote 24 Thus, the revised text made clear to all students the nature and distinctive histories of the two camps.
Owing to the PRC's pro-Soviet policy, textbooks in the early 1950s presented the world through a Soviet lens. The Chinese texts included many selections praising the superiority of the Soviet system, the amiable personalities of Lenin and Stalin, and the higher development of the socialist economy, culture and sciences. The texts on the US concentrated on the capitalist exploitation of the proletariat, the hardships endured by the working class, the high unemployment rate, the stratification between the rich and the poor, and racism. In order to make the anti-American statement more persuasive, editors specifically chose several Soviet and a few American writers' works to strengthen their arguments. The most conspicuous one is an introduction to the American writer, Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945).Footnote 25 The text implied that Americans themselves also harshly criticized their own society and thus separated the good American people from the bad capitalists who ruled over them, just as the official rhetoric claimed.
However, no exploitation of workers occurred in the USSR after the October Revolution. The Soviet people lived in a heavenly kingdom. The working class took power, instituted labour protection policies and invested in the most up-to-date technology and equipment, thus greatly improving working conditions. The success of the First Five-Year Plan carried worldwide significance as a victory for the worker-peasant classes. Not only had unemployment disappeared, but collectivization had also eliminated the last exploiting class, the kulak. Industrialization had transformed the USSR into a major economic power and a great progressive country. While the capitalist economies faced an incurable economic depression leading from prosperity to bankruptcy, socialist societies following the Soviet path travelled from poverty to prosperity. Workers, peasants and new intellectuals from worker and peasant backgrounds had become the masters of the country. The Czar Nicholas II's holiday villa had been turned into a resort for workers and peasants, thus “workers and peasants became the emperor.”Footnote 26
Among all the issues raised in the communist textbooks, racism probably figured most prominently. The black singer, Paul Robeson (1898–1976), became the most popular example signifying racism.Footnote 27 English textbooks for high school expressed similar views.Footnote 28 In comparison, American racism was not addressed in textbooks produced under KMT rule in Nanjing.
The outbreak of the Korean War intensified the CCP's anti-American propaganda. Chinese language textbooks in particular stressed the bellicose nature of American imperialism: capitalists sought more colonies and profited from wars. America's so-called democracy and liberty were lies, manipulated by capitalists. Feng Zhi 冯至, once praised by Lu Xun 鲁迅 as the most outstanding lyrical poet of the 1930s, contrasted Soviet generosity in halving East Germany's Second World War reparations with American villainy in spreading harmful insects in order to destroy its agriculture. The editors specifically asked students to pay particular attention to all the mocking and loathing expressions, such as “a bunch of journalists kept by imperialists” (yixiaozuo diguozhuyizhe huanyang de jizhemen 一小撮帝国主义者豢养的记者们), “sinister faces” (yinxian de mianmu 阴险的面目), “vile visage” (zhengning de mianmao 狰狞的面貌).Footnote 29
The language in the essay, “Peeling off the mask of ‘masked bandits’” (Boluo ‘mengmian qiangdao’ de mianju 剥落「蒙面强盗」的面具) by Mao Dun 茅盾, was even more striking. He sarcastically asserted that Harry Truman and Dean Acheson had boasted that “American imperialism [w]as the Avalokitesvara to save people from suffering and hardships” (jiuku jiunan de guanshiyin 救苦救难的观世音). He reduced American imperialism to 60 capitalist families, whom he called “Hitler's filial sons and grandsons” (xiaozi xiansun 孝子贤孙). It is well known that the CCP was anti-religious and anti-Confucianist. Thus, referring to American imperialism as an Avalokitesvara and American capitalists as Hitler's worthy progenies was extremely caustic language to say the least. Mao Dun further stated that “the Americans in the eyes of the world are the killing monster (sharen mowang 杀人魔王) and barbarians who eat people (chiren shengfan 吃人生番).” Magnates in Wall Street invented exotic slogans such as “travelling to the Orient,” “Korean girls,” and “high wages” to seduce innocent youths to join the war. They made the invasion look like a Hollywood movie about “hunting for gorgeous women in the jungle.” To sum up, American imperialism was the “masked robber” on whose mask capitalists had painted a pattern of “democracy,” and laced it with “peace.” The American ruling clique was “mad and rascally” (fengkuang youwulai 疯狂又无赖).Footnote 30 Admittedly, the language depicting enemies in any countries can be malicious. However, in the language textbooks of Maoist China, the numbers of texts depicting enemies in forceful and aggressive language were much higher than those under the KMT regime in Nanjing. The essays of Feng Zhi and Mao Dun may have made effective propaganda, but their exorbitant claims did not constitute a healthy education for the younger generations. Students were required to study carefully and memorize such expressions. Although such language was only used to describe the US in the early 1950s, it could depict any enemies so designated by the authorities in later political movements.
During the Korean War, the basic dogma depicting reactionary and aggressive American imperialism had been set. The downfall of America was particularly emphasized during the GLF when the PEP re-compiled new Chinese and Russian textbooks, including Mao Zedong's talk in Moscow in 1957 entitled “Imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers” (Diguozhuyi han yiqie fandongpai doushi zhilaohu 帝国主义和一切反动派都是纸老虎), which was particularly popular during the Cultural Revolution. Mao described Hitler, the tsars, China's emperors, Japanese imperialists and Chiang Kai-shek as paper tigers who were finally defeated because they were detached from the masses. America's possession of the atomic bomb had delayed its own inevitable demise but it too was a paper tiger.Footnote 31
In contrast to the many details of capitalist exploitation, intriguingly, the textbooks provided few details of democracy and freedom in the USSR. The texts relied on vague or abstract descriptions, such as “people's democracy” or “All political power belongs to the urban and rural toilers and is exercised by selecting representatives for the Soviet Congress from among these people.” The only concrete piece of evidence concerns the 1936 Soviet constitution, which the texts claimed to be the most democratic constitution in the world. They also stressed Soviet scientific achievements in improving human welfare, a goal only achievable by scientists in socialist countries, and compared them with capitalist science focused on profit and monopolized by capitalists.Footnote 32
The Gradual Emergence of the Third-World Viewpoint
The two-camp framework began to collapse with the change in Sino-Soviet relations. The 20th Party Congress of the Soviet Union in 1956 approved taking power by means other than class struggle and put forward the principle of peaceful coexistence and peaceful competition with the US. This conflicted with Mao Zedong's firm belief in class struggle. Also, Khrushchev's “secret report,” which denounced Stalin's personality cult without informing other communist countries in advance, infuriated Mao. Soon, Mao began to talk about learning lessons from Soviet mistakes.
In Mao's eyes, the success of a socialist revolution could only be measured by political activeness and ideology. He considered the nationalizing of all means of production and the “fruitful” anti-rightist campaign among his great accomplishments. With these achievements in mind, Mao went to Moscow in high spirits to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution. There he spoke about the new stage of world development in which the East wind prevailed over the West wind. This implied that the socialist bloc had gained the upper hand. The imperialist camp, only about one-seventh of the world population, suffered from internal disintegration and would be doomed sooner or later.Footnote 33 The talk reflected Mao's confidence in the victory of socialism and in China's rapid economic development, which he assumed would automatically result from its political and ideological progress. Also, the embryonic notion of the “third world” according to Mao's definition vaguely emerged. History, Chinese and Russian textbooks soon published extracts of his speech.
While in Moscow, Mao proposed that the Soviet Union should lead the socialist camp, a position China had held since the beginning of the Cold War. Why did Mao feel the need to re-affirm the Soviet leadership? His intention was to unite the socialist countries after 1956 tensions between the USSR and Eastern European countries. Also, Mao coyly stated, “China is a big country measured in terms of its politics and population, but still a small country in terms of its economy.” This implied that the two countries would be on an equal footing once China's economy matched that of the USSR. On the surface, Mao recognized Soviet leadership; in reality he intended to challenge its hegemony over the socialist camp. Thus, Mao launched the GLF in order to surpass the USSR economically and not, as he publically stated, to catch up with Britain and the US.Footnote 34
Mao believed that although China's science and industry remained inferior to those of the USSR, its political and agricultural development were superior. Textbooks highlighted Soviet industrial and scientific superiority over the US. Take, for example, an application question in arithmetic for grade school: the USSR launches the third satellite, which weighs 1,327kg, the American satellite only weighs 14.29kg. How many kilos more does the Soviet one weigh?Footnote 35 There was no such insertion of ideology in the arithmetic textbooks of the KMT government in Nanjing. However, the agriculture of China's GLF was compared with that of the US and not with the Soviet's “retarded agriculture.” The opening sentence of one Chinese textbook proudly announced: “The total wheat production in our country has surpassed that of the USA.” The author, the director of the Institute of International Relations, claimed that “eating American wheat infuriates people and makes their stomach upset. Therefore American wheat is like a plague and is cursed by people all over the world, except the Yugoslavian president, Tito.”Footnote 36
Another lesson depicting America's dark side had the sensational title of “In the USA, a kid was killed” (Zai Meiguo, youyige haizi beishasile 在美国有一个孩子被杀死了). It described the lynching of a 14-year-old black boy for whistling at a white female shopkeeper.Footnote 37 It is worth pointing out that at this point the comparison with the black boy's miserable fate is not between the US and the USSR, but between the US and China. The text ended by describing how Chinese Young Pioneers were bathed under a golden sun and joyfully played in the green river and pine woods. The contrast between light and darkness illuminates China's progress and people's happiness.
Contrary to Mao's expectations, the GLF did not achieve economic superiority for China, but instead produced a great famine. In the face of severe criticism of his policies, in 1962 Mao launched the socialist education campaign, a rehearsal for the Cultural Revolution. He urged people never to forget class struggle. The fifth grade Chinese textbook included a lesson entitled, “Must have clear-cut love and hatred” (Yaoyou xianmingde aiyuhen 要有鲜明的爱与恨), which distinguished love and hatred along class lines. It stated, “What to love? What to hate? Generally speaking, love our cause, love communism, and hate imperialism … We must hate imperialism because it is our most vicious enemy.” Those who did not engage in a fierce class struggle against the enemy were branded as useless to the Party or the Communist Youth Corps.Footnote 38 It is not surprising that after immersion in such black-and-white education, the young had acquired a reflexive reaction towards those labelled as the “enemy,” the definition of which could be changed any time by the Party's new policy.
A number of disagreements led to the Sino-Soviet Split,Footnote 39 and a 30-year Sino-Soviet cold war ensued. The CCP considered that the USSR had not only become revisionist, but had also degenerated into imperialism. These new circumstances invalidated the former guiding principle of praising the USSR. This dramatic political u-turn placed textbook editors in a precarious situation. For instance, in 1959 some editors wrote a new geography textbook, the guidelines of which continued to stress “beautifying the USSR and vilifying the US” and lauding “the solidarity in the socialist camp led by the USSR.”Footnote 40 Unfortunately, the PEP published this textbook in September 1960, just as the Sino-Soviet split became public when Soviet experts were suddenly recalled from China. Putting the guidelines in context with what was happening politically, it is only natural to feel sorry for those poor editors.
By the early 1960s, the new geography textbooks divided the world not by camps, but by continents. Space devoted to the USSR went from two whole chapters extolling its virtues as the world leader, to a part of one chapter devoted to all European countries, and finally to a short final section of the text's last chapter devoted to reprehensible European countries. In the Cultural Revolution edition, Albania replaced the USSR as “a great and bright light of socialism in Europe.”Footnote 41 World history books made similar changes. Whereas the 1960 edition devoted a 20-page final chapter to the world after the Second World War, the 1963 edition gave it only four pages, with only one short paragraph mentioning the Soviet defeat of Nazism and completion of the Fourth Five-Year Plan. The 1963 edition also deleted the statement, “the Soviet Union headed” the socialist camp.Footnote 42
Yet, even these changes failed to keep up with rapidly changing world affairs. In early 1965, the Ministry of Education informed the relevant authorities that errors remained in the world history high school textbooks. As a result, the Ministry ordered the temporary closure of the entire course on modern world history and the cancellation of the university entrance examination on the subject for 1965.Footnote 43
The two-camp worldview was gradually transformed into three worlds. The first official mention of the term “three worlds” appeared in early 1974. Mao stated that the USA and the USSR belonged to the first world because of their wealth and large nuclear arsenals; Japan, Europe, Australia and Canada formed the second world; and Asia (excluding Japan), Africa and Latin America constituted the third world. Because the third world was the most populated, once united it would become the centre of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism.Footnote 44 The three-world framework, however, originated much earlier. As the Sino-Soviet conflict escalated in the early 1960s and Western colonial empires collapsed, China and the USSR eagerly competed for the support of Yafeila 亚非拉 (Asia, Africa and Latin America) countries.
In the early 1950s, when the non-Western world was still largely dominated by Western colonial empires, world history texts mentioned only in passing the “awakening of Asian countries.” Among the Yafeila countries, only North Korea appeared in Chinese textbooks. African and Latin American countries could be found not in history texts, but in geography books. The latter emphasized the racism and colonialism in Africa and trumpeted that “Africa is the Blacks' Africa.”Footnote 45
The 1954 Geneva Conference marked the CCP's debut on the international political stage beyond the confines of socialist diplomacy. Along with the Bundung Conference in 1955, Yafeila gradually gained more attention. The world history textbooks for high schools highlighted two issues: the national liberation in Asia and Africa, and the Bundung Conference. Since 1956, Modern World History had carried a section entitled “The unprecedented upsurge of national liberation movements in Asia and Africa,” which listed the newly independent countries in both continents.Footnote 46 Special attention was also given to the Bandung Conference spearheading anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism. The Bandung Conference was depicted as “the first international conference in human history which had no representative from a colonial country in attendance.” It “believed national self-determination is the pre-condition for fully enjoying all the basic human rights and advocated that those peoples who are conquered, ruled and exploited by foreigners will soon acquire freedom and independence.”Footnote 47 The texts emphasized the central role played by China more and more as time went by. But only the 1956 and 1957 editions mention the conference's endorsement of “human rights,” possibly because of the hundred flowers campaign which was then underway; the statement was erased in later editions.
It was only after the 1956 Suez Crisis and the collapse of the colonial empires that Africa was given more detailed descriptions in the textbooks. From the late 1950s, interaction between China and Africa increased and this was duly reflected in language textbooks. The first poem on an African subject, “Slave Boat” by Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), appeared in 1963. This was followed by another text, “Sambo.” Sambo was a poor black living in Central Africa, swindled by heartless white men and eaten alive by a lion.Footnote 48 The editors used the story to instil anti-imperialist sentiment against colonizers.
Latin America was depicted as having its resources totally under American imperialist control since the early 1950s. However, many communist parties were coming into their own, particularly in Cuba. In May 1960, Mao asserted that “Chinese people, like Latin American people, had long suffered under imperialist exploitation and suppression … Cuban people, Latin American peoples, and people around the world are all the Chinese people's friends … People are the decisive factor and, depending on their solidarity and struggles, they will surely defeat imperialism and its lackeys and bring about permanent world peace.” This talk was included in the Russian textbook.Footnote 49 Notably, Mao stressed the quantity of the people as a major factor in the victory over imperialism. China's experience of overthrowing the old regime and imperialist powers would also inspire the colonized countries to follow suit.
The 1961 geography textbook gave particular attention to contrasting conditions in Cuba before and after the revolution. The Chinese textbook of 1962 included the poem, “Yankees go home!” (Meiguolao, gunhuiqu! 美国佬 , 滚回去!), by the Cuban poet, Nicolas Guillen (1902–1989). This was the only one on Latin America to appear in any Chinese textbook after 1949.Footnote 50 In 1964, a Chinese textbook selected the essay, “Open Fire at the Plague God” (Xiangwenshen kaipao 向瘟神开炮), which appealed for the liberation of Taiwan by calling on the joint forces of the colonized countries to expel American imperialism. In the words of the last paragraph:
For the sake of the struggle for justice in Asia, Africa and Latin America, [aim]
At Eisenhower,
At American imperialism, [and]
Open fire! Open fire! Open fire!Footnote 51
The militant tone was obviously influenced by the radical line of the socialist education campaign and shares much in common with the language (with variations) used during the Cultural Revolution.
After the GLF, the number of texts concerning the USSR declined dramatically, but those about Yafeila did not fill the void. In fact, the CCP emphasized not friendship with Yafeila, but Chinese leadership. The 1963 textbook on world history placed greater emphasis on the success of the Chinese Revolution, which had greatly encouraged other countries suffering under imperialist suppression.Footnote 52 Also, this edition deleted all material covering the previously glorified Bandung Conference. One reason behind this excision was that India had become an enemy during the border war in 1962. In addition, many of the other participants at the conference were not on friendly terms with each other or with China. The CCP was now embarrassed to mention the Bandung Conference: the pro-Chinese regimes in Indonesia and Algeria had been overthrown; the second Indian–Pakistan war had broken out; and there was controversy over aid to Vietnam during its war with the US. Since rapidly changing international affairs could not be reflected in the textbooks in a timely fashion, the last chapter of the modern world history textbook became shorter and shorter, and the 1963 edition ended abruptly in early 1950, the same year as the first authorized national world history textbook was published after the founding of the PRC.
In 1965, Lin Biao described North America and Western Europe as “cities of the world,” and Asia, African and Latin America as the “countryside of the world.” Victory in the current world revolution, as in the Chinese civil war, would result from the countryside encircling the cities.Footnote 53 During the Cultural Revolution, the CCP put the USSR in the same camp as the USA because the USSR had become revisionist and imperialist, and was competing for hegemony with the USA. The CCP jettisoned the two-camp paradigm for a vision of three worlds in order to cast off Soviet leadership.
At the United Nations in 1974, Deng Xiaoping elaborated on Mao's three-world concept. He labelled the USA and the USSR as the first world, the biggest exploiters and suppressors of others, and the source of new world wars. The third world, consisting of Asia, Africa and Latin America, was the main progressive force to move world history forward against imperialism, colonialism and the superpowers. If the two superpowers kept bullying and suppressing others, they would provoke strong resistance from the people of the third world.Footnote 54 What Deng did not say directly, but his analysis strongly implied it, was that China had had much experience in anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism and so should naturally serve as the leader and the spokesman for the third world.
Conclusion
It is well known that ideology affects the writing of textbooks in China, as elsewhere. What distinguishes the PRC from other countries is that its textbooks between 1949 and 1966 underwent constant re-writing in response to swiftly changing policies and to redefine China's role in the world. Dai Botao's exhortation for textbooks to maintain consistency and yet remain closely connected with politics and realityFootnote 55 posed a daunting challenge for the editors. In the face of so many political campaigns, especially the anti-rightist campaign, the editors were bound to sacrifice consistency for politics.
The CCP's nationalist view of the outside world, from two camps to three worlds, was reflected by the various subjects of textbooks: images of the US generally remained the same from 1949 to 1966; images of Asia, Africa and Latin America were blurry compared to those of the USSR and the USA; images of the USSR underwent drastic change. As Mao Zedong contested Soviet leadership of the international communist movement, the CCP had to resituate itself from being a devoted follower of the Soviet Union to being the standard bearer of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and anti-hegemonism and serving as the centre of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy.
There is indeed continuity in the nationalism presented in the textbooks throughout 20th-century China; there are changes as well. First, the flag-bearer of imperialism changed. The Republican textbooks made no specific statement about American imperialism in China. Yet, after 1949, the US was viewed from a Marxist viewpoint as the most vicious and biggest imperialist power. The USSR became the leader of the socialist camp, of which China was also a member. It was only after the Sino-Soviet split that the USSR was put on equal footing with the US in the imperialist camp. Such a change is impossible to detect from the History Teaching Outline: as Alisa Jones states, the 1956 and 1963 editions only had “some minor changes.”Footnote 56 While both Outlines claimed the inevitability of the downfall of capitalism and of the victory of socialism, the leading actor tasked with combatting imperialism changed from being the USSR in 1956 to being the PRC in 1963, and thus the description of the outside world changed accordingly.
Second, the CCP had far greater control over textbook writing than did the KMT. Both the KMT and the CCP aimed to place textbook production under party supervision. However, the vagueness of Sun Yat-senism and the slack party functions of the Nanjing government presented editors with the space to present the worldview according to their own interpretations, as long as that was not from the aspect of class struggle. In contrast, editors in Maoist China had little room to negotiate with the Party and were more subject to CCP demands. This is not only because Marxism-Leninism is a more rigid ideology, but also because the CCP had more centralized and efficient organizations than the KMT. Thus, the the CCP's directives could be conveyed to all levels far more effectively.Footnote 57 In this sense, the CCP was truly able to “partify” education, a goal which the KMT shared but did not have the ability to achieve. Therefore, the nationalism constructed by the CCP during Mao's era could be more precisely called “party-led nationalism.” Furthermore, I fully agree with Culp's statement that “Republican Chinese schools could hardly act as ‘ideology state apparatuses,’ which Louis Althusser contends determine students' consciousness and social action by imposing the ideology and practices of the dominant society.”Footnote 58 Also, consideration must be taken of the fact that Republican society and schools were relatively pluralistic. Owing to the CCP's greater control over social and ideological affairs, textbook writing in the Maoist era fits well with Althusser's concept of ideology state apparatuses.Footnote 59
Students receive information via many different channels, and textbooks are just one source of information. However, all public media in Maoist China propagated the same official ideology, despite possible lapses among them. In addition, the relative isolation of China at that time allowed the CCP to instil its official ideology more efficiently. As Dai Botao said, textbooks for students were like their everyday meals and teachers were like mothers feeding them.Footnote 60 Students during the Maoist era were not at liberty to make their own choices. It could be argued that teachers might not necessarily teach according to textbooks. Again, this could have been possible at that time, but it became increasingly unlikely after anti-rightist campaign. A high school teacher from that era remarked that after 1957, at least in public, teachers would stick to the text, whatever it was, to save their own skins.Footnote 61 Since the presentation of the world was subject to constant rewriting by the CCP, it was the Party that defined who was friend and who was foe. After such a prolonged immersion in this kind of education, students would blindly follow whatever the Party decreed and suppress their own interpretations. It was this dictatorial and suppressive system of education which eventually led to the formation of the Red Guard mentality in the younger generations.
In addition, it is clear that the vitriolic language used during the Cultural Revolution had been taught, albeit on a lesser scale, since outbreak of the Korean War. Over time, the language used in texts became increasingly abusive towards class enemies and regressive countries. Some may argue that such phrasing had appeared during the May Fourth movement. However, it is one thing to use such terminology in talks, newspapers or journals, and quite another to use it in textbooks to educate the young. By 1966, a generation of carefully vetted teaching materials had supplied the vocabularies and idioms used by the Red Guards to analyse the world and take action. Ironically, the young people educated by these texts directed the vocabulary and analytical frameworks at the very teachers, editors, and even the authorities, who had authored as well as authorized the texts. Armed with the expressions learned from school textbooks and motivated by emotion,Footnote 62 it was perhaps inevitable that students would so easily vent their hatred of the class enemy – cultivated since the early 1950s and intensified during the GLF and the socialist education campaign – during the Cultural Revolution.
Since the 1980s, textbook writing has become less political and more diversified. The CCP allows many editions of textbooks under one unified guideline. In general, the worldview is not presented in straightforward black-and-white terms. Textbooks have dropped the phrases “class struggle,” “reactionary” and “revolution.” In the 21st century, the worldview framework has become “one superpower and many great powers” (yichao duoqiang 一超多强). Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US was the only superpower, along with the great powers of Japan, the European Union, China and Russia. The CCP still continues with the view that it is the ambition of the US to dominate the world, and it is hegemonism that China now fights against.Footnote 63 It is clear to see how nationalism in its different forms has continued to shape the CCP's worldview as reflected in textbooks during the Maoist era, after the Tiananmen incident and the present day.
