Tailoring School Textbooks
CCP propaganda departments also control what is taught and what is not taught in Chinese schools. Political education singing praises of the CCP leadership is compulsory for every youngster, and a “must pass” subject for school leavers. After the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, paramount leader and long-time colleague of Mao, Deng Xiaoping concluded that the cause of the pro-democracy movement was that political education had been neglected.
In the months and years that followed, new textbooks were compiled that emphasize the glories of the CCP, omit inconvenient truths and whitewash the many so-called “errors” that the CCP had made. This so-called patriotic education extends beyond schools to include television, film, and the news media.
All this has serious consequences. Modern Chinese history is being re-written while participants and witnesses of events are still well alive. Many middle-aged people do not know just 50 years ago the worst famine in human history took place in China and claimed at least 36 million lives, still less do they know the Anti-Rightist campaign which inflicted over 20 years’ untold sufferings on half a million of the cream of the Chinese society.
Many young or not so young people in China today do not know what the Cultural Revolution was, and many young people do not know Tian’anmen massacre that took place in Beijing merely 20 years ago. Instead, thanks to the permeating propaganda, many people in China believe in the infallibility of the CCP and its exclusive and almost divine-given right to rule.
CCP propaganda departments also control what is taught and what is not taught in Chinese schools. Political education singing praises of the CCP leadership is compulsory for every youngster, and a “must pass” subject for school leavers. After the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, paramount leader and long-time colleague of Mao, Deng Xiaoping concluded that the cause of the pro-democracy movement was that political education had been neglected.
In the months and years that followed, new textbooks were compiled that emphasize the glories of the CCP, omit inconvenient truths and whitewash the many so-called “errors” that the CCP had made. This so-called patriotic education extends beyond schools to include television, film, and the news media.
All this has serious consequences. Modern Chinese history is being re-written while participants and witnesses of events are still well alive. Many middle-aged people do not know just 50 years ago the worst famine in human history took place in China and claimed at least 36 million lives, still less do they know the Anti-Rightist campaign which inflicted over 20 years’ untold sufferings on half a million of the cream of the Chinese society.
Many young or not so young people in China today do not know what the Cultural Revolution was, and many young people do not know Tian’anmen massacre that took place in Beijing merely 20 years ago. Instead, thanks to the permeating propaganda, many people in China believe in the infallibility of the CCP and its exclusive and almost divine-given right to rule.