What Chinese textbooks don't say (CNN)

CNN - AP ^ | April 17, 2005 | AP

[real_dd2]

SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- Some things you won't find in Chinese history textbooks: the 1989 democracy movement, the millions who died in a famine caused by misguided communist policies or China's military attacks on India and Vietnam.

Also missing:

The 1989 crackdown on democracy demonstrations, when Chinese troops killed hundreds and possibly thousands of unarmed protesters. The estimated 30 million Chinese who starved to death during the 1958-61 "Great Leap Forward," revolutionary leader Mao Zedong's attempt to speed up China's farm and factory output through mass collectivization.

Textbooks gloss over ally North Korea's invasion of South Korea at the start of the 1950-53 Korean War, a conflict that drew in troops from the United States and other countries on the side of the South and China's army in support of the North.

The texts say only that "civil war broke out," without mentioning how it started. America is portrayed as an invader that forced Beijing to intervene by threatening Chinese territory.

A seventh-grade text also accuses the U.S. military of using biological weapons during the Korean War, repeating a claim made by China, North Korea and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War but never proven.

While Japan's distortions of its history appear driven by a reluctance to accept shame, China's are aimed at preserving communist rule, said Sin-ming Shaw, a China scholar at Oxford University in England.

"Not owning up is a calculated political policy," Shaw said.

[Paul_Denton]

Much as I cannot stand CNN, I am glad someone is reporting China's hypocrisy.

[injin]

still not mentioning Tibet !
but damn, this is right .
The Chinese blame the Japanese for being history revisionists when they are the greatest practitioners of this revisionism
in the entire world .
Certainly one of the lamest governments on Earth !
and the sheeplike populations that they can recruit to advance their shenanigans....auwe auwe

[samtheman]

The political structure of Japanese Militarism --- responsible for the invasion of China in the 30's and the attack on Pearl Harbor --- is gone.

The Chinese Communist Party --- with the blood of perhaps 50 million Chinese people on its hands --- is still here today.

When Japan glosses over its crimes against China it is at least doing so from the vantage point of a new government and a new political structure.

In China, the government that committed the crimes and the government that refuses to acknowledge the crimes is the same government.