Taiwan makes bid to distort history
Bi LunChina Daily  Updated: 2004-11-11 08:36

Teenagers in Taiwan will soon be confused by the island's authorities' 2006 drafted outline of history courses for high school students, which has completely altered the traditional teaching of history in Taiwan.

The draft, reportedly published on Tuesday, takes the island province out of Chinese history, referring to the period in Chinese history after the Revolution of 1911 under the range of Chinese ancient history, but not the history of Taiwan.

Taiwan authorities moves to desinificate are distortion of history and politically calculated. [cartoon by Liu Yanfeng/China Daily]

The island's "education minister" claimed the period of the Republic of China belongs to Chinese history and has nothing to do with Taiwan.

Some Taiwan media have asked whether Dr Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Revolution of 1911, which overthrew the Qing court (1644-1911) and ended China's 2,000-year-old feudal system, and is respected as the "Father of the Nation," has now become a foreigner, based upon this ridiculous logic.

The Taiwan authorities' moves are politically calculated.

Just as Taiwan is part of China, the island's past is an integral part of China's history.

That it took the "education minister" to challenge the fact is another ramification of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)'s growing distaste for the island's undeniable Chineseness.

The draft is merely a continuation of the island's pro-independence supporters' old tricks of "desinification" to separate Taiwan from the motherland.

Since Chen Shui-bian took office in 2000, promoting "desinification" and "name rectification" movements, the separatist forces in Taiwan have been engaged in a feverish attempt to remove everything from Taiwan that may have a connection to the Chinese mainland, to distance the island further from reunification with the motherland.

But no matter how hard they try, reality is reality. They can never get round the long-standing legal reality that Taiwan has never been an independent state but has been and still is a part of China.

History tells us Taiwan was placed under the jurisdiction of China's Fujian Province as early as the 12th century.

The founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 only changed the governing body of China, not the country's scope of sovereignty. This has already been recognized by the international community.

To sever Taiwan's history from China's is an attempt by the Taiwan separatists to confuse the recognition of one nation among the people, in particular young people, on the island.

Behind the move is simply a separatist ambition to gradually dilute the Taiwan people's sense of being Chinese.

But they will have to pay for what they are doing now as this is against the immediate interests of people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, who want peace and stability as well as prosperity.

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