Opinion is divided over how Chinese history should be segmented. The division was accentuated as the Ministry of Education required high school sophomores to study "the history of China" rather than "national history" in the coming semester.
In Taiwan as well as in China, the history of the country is taught in school as "pen guo shi or national history" in lieu of Chinese history. The government in Taipei now wants to segment the part of Chinese history before 1945 as "the history of China," which high school sophomores have to read when they go to school after the Chinese New Year. Of course, the government wants to call the part of "national history" after the Second World War "the history of Taiwan."
There is nothing wrong in whichever way Chinese history or "national history" is segmented, so long as facts are taught as history. People of Taiwan should be taught the history of Taiwan, but there should be no doctoring historical facts for political purposes. The history of Taiwan should teach when and how ethnic Chinese came to settle on the island, how they drove aborigines out of their land, and how they Sinicized their island under the leadership of Koxinga and his son. People should be taught their forefathers tried to restore ethnic Chinese Ming rule, fought for independence against Japan in 1895, were oppressed under Japanese occupation, and jubilantly welcomed the retrocession of their homeland to the Republic of China after Japan's unconditional surrender to the Allies. Ah, yes, the people have to know thousands of innocent native islanders were massacred, along with hundreds of mainlanders, in the tragic February 28 Incident of 1947. But students have to learn how Taiwan was modernized by the now hated alien government of the Kuomintang and finally democratized, working the economic miracle of the twentieth century in the process.
Historians, if not trying to be politically correct, should present all these facts "wie eigentliche gewesen" or "as truly seen" in the words of Leopold von Ranke. They cannot selectively pick up or ignore facts they like or detest. The reason is simple. History is understanding, not judgment.
The current government is trying what it can to desinicize Taiwan. The segmentation of "national history" is just part of its effort to cut off any relations between Taiwan and China. That effort is in vain, for by far the greatest majority of people in Taiwan are ethnically and culturally Chinese. The new history textbook for high school sophomores will be revised as soon as the ruling Democratic Progressive Party loses power.
（本文刊載於96.03.07 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
