The Chinese Clio

How would a Chinese superpower treat the rest of the world?


That is a question that is debated from here to Moscow with Washington and London and everyone else wondering…


How would a Chinese superpower treat the rest of the world?


If the Chinese government is anything like my friend Li Zian, a Chinese foreign exchange student here at KA, that superpower would treat the world very well.

Li was one of the real finds for me this year at KA. I met him on his first day here in Jordan, a tall, smiling young man, so excited about his new school, so excited to jump into everything he could here at school. I soon discovered that Li would be in my AP Art History class, and would also live in my dormitory. You couldn’t ask for a nicer, friendlier, more involved student.

Then I heard him play the flute. At a “coffee house” in the first weeks of school Li played a flute piece and asked us to imagine the subject of the work, an old man, and feel the wind and the waves. Li masterfully played this piece. I mean, this guy is remarkably good on the flute. Soon I looked for a piece for Li with which he might accompany our choir. I found the perfect piece for Graduation, a song called, “Take These Wings,” and it had a flute accompaniment. Li soared with this piece.

Unfortunately, Li’s schedule changed sometime in early October and he changed English classes and Art History classes. But I loved to talk to Li about a hundred things.

Eventually we got to the subject of History and how History is taught in China. I never baldly asked Li, “How would a Chinese superpower treat the rest of the world?” (maybe that will be a subject for next year!) but I do think anyone wanting to peer into the future about that query could do well to start by looking at the past, or at least the version of the past China teaches to its youth. Li and I had several conversations about the study of History in China. First of all, Li said no one knew any authors of history books, meaning, there was no discussion of point of view or bias, or that there is even such a study called historiography, the study of how history is perceived. Li said you memorized whole texts, never wondered about them, never thought the text was anything other than pure fact, indeed, pure dogma (my word, not his).

Here is the gist of what I got from Li: China’s schoolchildren are being taught a version of history that is strongly nationalist. Now, really, that isn’t a real surprise. Who isn’t taught a “nationalist” version of history at home? But the next piece in my puzzle is more interesting: the official narrative of history, the conclusion, is that their country was once ruthlessly exploited by rapacious foreigners. And only a strong China can correct these historic wrongs.

There is more than a kernel of truth in this official story. Foreign imperialists certainly made designs on China in the 19th and 20th centuries. The trouble is that China’s official history lacks the quality that Maoism was meant to stress: self-criticism. When I visited the National Museum of China in Tiananmen Square on my trip to China earlier in this century, I saw and read about the terrible things that foreigners have done to the Chinese. There is nothing about the even more terrible things that Chinese people did to each other—largely because most of these things were committed by the Communist party, which still runs the country. When I asked Li about what one could talk about in a history class, he said, “Oh, anything.” He paused and said, “Well, you can’t say anything about 1964, of course.” I asked about 1989, and he said, “Oh, no, the history doesn’t talk about that.”

These gaps matter.

A more honest debate about the past will be an essential journey to a more open political system. A view of Chinese history that moves beyond a narrative of conclusions, a narrative of victimhood, to a narrative of inquiry, might also make China’s rise to global power smoother.

The galleries in that Beijing museum devoted to modern Chinese history are called “Road to Rejuvenation.” I found on its website that the visitor is treated to an introduction that reads, “The Chinese nation is a great nation whose people are industrious, courageous, intelligent and peace-loving.” Based on my interactions with Li this year, I would say that he indeed fits that bill to a tee. The museum exhibition promises to show how the Chinese people, “after being reduced to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society since the opium war of 1840, rose in resistance against humiliation and misery and tried in every possible way to rejuvenate the nation.”

Li spoke with me about how political and insistent the history lessons in school would be. This national museum explains that “the imperial powers descended on China like a swarm of bees, looting our treasures and killing our people.” Tons of space is devoted to the Japanese invasion of the 1930s—but the Chinese civil war between nationalists and communists is given relatively cursory treatment. I remember our tour guide explaining to me, when I pressed him, “That isn’t seen as so interesting. It is seen as just Chinese people fighting Chinese people.”

As Li explained, and I already intuited, China under communism is even more heavily edited. As I mentioned before, Li said, “you can’t say anything about 1964,” the time of the “Great Leap Forward,” the man-made famine that killed about 20 million people. The turmoil and terror of that time is not discussed. Nor is the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.

It is interesting to think about what a national museum might look like if it had an international array of historians, guided by our Greek muse Clio, at the helm. I am not saying the Chinese should remove the emphasis on exploitation. No, but as 21st century nations engage with modern China, it will be important to understand how China views its own past. According to Li, every Chinese schoolchild is taught about the 1840 opium war waged by the British. It would also be wonderful to teach the Chinese about the events of 1989, but not just the resistance, but that that student revolt was part of a time-honored tradition of student uprisings in China, demanding national rejuvenation, and had echoes of similar events in 1919 and 1935 (and on both of those occasions, the student protesters had been provoked by perceived humiliation by foreigners). Those historical memories help to explain why the Chinese authorities feel vulnerable, I think, to accusations that they have shown weakness in dealing with the outside world. Is the Chinese government deliberately stoking up nationalism as a source of political legitimacy?

Anyway, I am thinking about China so much today since a couple of hours ago I bid adieu to Li for the summer. I thanked him for coming to KA and enriching our campus so much. Can you imagine—how courageous it was for him to get on a plane, knowing no one in Jordan, and take that risk and come here? I guess I did the same thing five years ago, but I was over 40, and he is but a 17-year old.

What an ambassador for his country, this Li. How exciting to hear him play the flute, discuss his homeland and its culture and discuss some of the pedagogy and facts about the study of his nation’s past. Li reminded me that how we perceive China, or rather the name of it, is really a western creation. We liked the china porcelain from China and so dubbed this great land after the sought-after glazed ware. The name for China in China is actually, “Middle Kingdom,” or really, the center kingdom, and even more precisely, the center of the world….hmmmm…

That understanding that China to the Chinese is an “omphalos,” a Greek word for the navel, the center of the world, also helps us as we ponder that interesting question about the years to come, “How would a Chinese superpower treat the rest of the world?”

I will have to ask Li about that when we return at the end of the summer.