Chinese History Textbooks Research Articles

Introduction: Contesting China’s New “National” Music

Introduction: Contesting China’s New “National” Music Joshua H. Howard Despite widespread recognition that music both constitutes and reflects culture, the study of Chinese music and its development has been marginalized from mainstream topics of historical inquiry. In most English-language Chinese history textbooks, for instance, the subject of music in twentieth-century China is conspicuous only by its absence. Twentieth-Century China seeks to redress this historiographical lacuna by devoting a special issue to music, especially the development of “New Music,” defined by one of its leading scholars as, “music composed by Chinese using European compositional techniques and musical idioms.”1 Given that the new music was largely a product of semi-colonial, cosmopolitan Shanghai, it is appropriate that all four articles consider musicians and musical developments in Shanghai, where Chinese-foreign interaction and experimentation in modern art forms were most visible and audible. Each author examines how members of China’s music community struggled for national transformation in a highly contested process of defining the new “national” music, whether that meant defending elements of pre-existing Chinese music, adopting European stylistic elements, composing Chinese-Western fusion works, or creating a socialist realist style directed towards a new mass audience. In “The Shanghai Conservatory, Chinese Musical Life, and the Russian Diaspora, 1927–1949,” Hon-Lun Yang brings to life a forgotten chapter in the development of China’s “new music.” Although Russian pedagogues constituted almost half of all full-time faculty at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and influenced an entire generation of Chinese musicians that came to the fore during the Maoist era, such as composer He Luting, pianist Ding Shande, and conductor Li Delun, the question of how Western musicians, and Russian musicians in particular, contributed to the development of Chinese music was largely avoided during the Maoist era for its sensitive political implications. Yang suggests that Russian musicians, because of their own marginalized status in Shanghai’s expatriate community, may have been uniquely positioned to influence their Chinese counterparts. Yang’s use of memoirs reveals that Chinese graduates from the Shanghai Conservatory remember a time of intense musical exchange with their Russian teachers, during which a transculturation of the nation’s musical practices occurred that facilitated China’s musical modernity. John Winzenburg’s “Aaron Avshalomov and New Chinese Music in Shanghai, 1931–1947” reveals how this Russian-Jewish immigrant’s hybrid identity as a [End Page 2] Chinese acculturated foreigner facilitated his experimental work as conductor, composer, and pedagogue that defied rigid traditional-modern, Chinese-Western dichotomies and contributed to the development of a new “national” Chinese music. Analyzing Avshalomov’s compositional style and influence on musicians, the author demonstrates how Avshalomov inspired burgeoning composers to experiment with Chinese stylistic elements while using Western musical techniques. Moreover, Avshalomov’s compositions have contemporary relevance as they have foreshadowed an important genre of Chinese-Western fusion compositions during the ongoing reform era. Contestation over participation in China’s musical modernity is the subject of Joys Cheung’s article, “Divide and Connections in Chinese Musical Modernity: Cases of Musical Networks Emerging in Colonial Shanghai, 1919–1937.” Cheung argues that previous interpretations of Chinese musical modernity have privileged the reform-oriented Shanghai Conservatory over the nativist Great Unity Music Society. Whereas the former advocated Western classical music as the foundation for a new Chinese music, the latter sought to defend preexisting Chinese music practices while incorporating them into modern developments. By the early 1930s these two organizations had developed an antagonistic relationship with each other. Prominent reformers, for instance, criticized Chinese musical instruments for being technologically obsolete and lacking expressive power. Perhaps as a consequence of accepting these criticisms at face value, musicologists have often treated the Great Unity Music Society as peripheral to China’s musical modernity, or, at best, an organization “on the verge” of musical modernity. By contrast, Cheung reveals that musicians from the two organizations overlapped in significant ways. Employing the concept of “weak ties,” derived from social network theory, Cheung argues that the two organizations shared a commitment to the nation-building project and that both “reformers” and “defenders” “embraced a greater openness to a bi-musical—albeit loosely defined—approach in pursuing Chinese modernity...

Others No More: The Changing Representation of Non-Han Peoples in Chinese History Textbooks, 1951–2003

This article analyzes the changes in the representation of non-Han peoples in textbooks of premodern Chinese history published in China since the establishment of the People's Republic. Whereas in the early 1950s, these peoples were treated as non-Chinese others and were even referred to as “foreigners,” by the beginning of the twenty-first century, they were totally incorporated into the Chinese historical self through a new narrative claiming that they had always been Chinese. Simultaneously, the textbooks exhibit a clear shift from a Han-exclusivist vision of Chinese history to a more inclusive and multi-ethnic one. Based on an analysis of the content, language, and organization of textbooks and other related materials, the article proposes that although the incorporation of non-Han peoples into the Chinese historical subject was gradual, this process accelerated dramatically as a result of a planned reform launched in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The article explains the reasons for the reform and its timing, and examines its implications for the Chinese nation-state and China's ethnic minorities.

Narratives of the Korean War in Chinese High School History Textbooks

This article surveys the characteristics and changes of China's historical understanding of Korea by examining the descriptions of the Korean War in its high school history textbooks. Twelve textbooks published from 1978 to 2008, which used the former USSR-style of Lishi jiaoxuedagang or the American style of Lishi kechengbiaozhun, were analyzed. China is a country that uses history education as a main mechanism of its ideological education, which establishes its ideology and justifies the party. Since China has reformed its educational framework in accordance with the demands of the times, an analysis of Chinese history textbooks is a suitable way to comprehend China's understanding of other countries. An analysis of the history of war and, in particular, the Korean War will provide a clear understanding of China's awareness of Korea. Although its official stance regarding the Korean War has not changed much, what has changed is the use of a relatively objective description from its exclusively ideological viewpoint shown in past textbooks. The textbooks also consider the relations between North and South Korea apart from its interpretation of the war solely as a confrontation between China and America.

Party Historiography in the People's Republic of China

Previous articleNext article No AccessStudiesParty Historiography in the People's Republic of ChinaSusanne Weigelin-SchwiedrzikSusanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 17Jan., 1987 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2158969 Views: 12Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Journal History This article was published in The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs (1979-1995), which is continued by The China Journal (1995-present). Copyright Australian Journal of Chinese AffairsPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Chang Jiang, He Renyi, Ren Hailong The semiotic guerrilla: Internet subcultures as political resistance in China, Journal of Media and Communication Studies 13, no.44 (Dec 2021): 110–120.https://doi.org/10.5897/JMCS2021.0750Nicola Spakowski Destabilising the Truths of Revolution: Strategies of Subversion in the Autobiographical Writing of Political Women in China, (Jan 2013): 133–158.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137368577_6Nimrod Baranovitch Others No More: The Changing Representation of Non-Han Peoples in Chinese History Textbooks, 1951–2003, The Journal of Asian Studies 69, no.11 (Mar 2010): 85–122.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911809991598