2024-03-25 09:22:57
The Chinese Communist Party often proudly praises the 5,000-year history of Chinese civilization. But China’s leaders are still wrestling with how to recount the past few centuries.
For decades, Chinese scholars have been painstakingly drafting an official history of the Qing Dynasty at the request of the CCP. The Qing Dynasty was China’s last imperial dynasty. The Manchus ruled for nearly 270 years until the dynasty’s official demise in the early 20th century. The Chinese government invested thousands of researchers and huge sums of money to complete this task, producing a draft of more than 100 volumes and tens of millions of words.
However, the growing ideological hardening of the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping has led to continued delays in the publication of this historical work, which has been delayed for more than a decade. This shows how the CCP has strengthened its control over history to advance its own goals.
The Qing dynasty is crucial to the Communist Party’s narrative of saving China from “a century of humiliation” inflicted by foreign powers. This period of history begins with the Qing government’s defeat in the Opium War that began in 1839, and ends with the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. China’s current territory is largely inherited from the Qing Dynasty, and its legitimacy is closely related to the territorial claims of the Qing Dynasty.
People familiar with the matter said that several reviewers within the party, including a senior historian supported by Xi Jinping, criticized the “History of the Qing” manuscript last year, saying it deviated too much from the official view and demanded revisions to bring past history into line with Xi Jinping’s Visions for the future can be more coherent.
One of the people said the criticism focused on political issues, including claims that the manuscript “does not speak for the people.”
While trying to deal with criticism, the National Qing History Compilation Committee, which presided over the compilation of “Qing History”, is also racing against time. Many of the key researchers involved in the Qing History compilation project are in their old age, and some, including the commission’s first director, have passed away.
The project’s travails reflect the role of history in Xi Jinping’s China, which is both important and politically charged. Xi Jinping relies on China’s fascination with its own history to promote what he calls a “correct view of history” aimed at strengthening his “Chinese Dream” of national rejuvenation and authoritarian rule. In practice, this means promoting a nationalist narrative that casts the CCP as the sole guarantor of China’s unstoppable rise, while suppressing alternative historical views that run counter to official dogma.
According to people familiar with the Qing History project, Xi Jinping has swept away the relatively tolerant ideological climate that prevailed before he took power in 2012, leaving historians at a loss as to what to do.
One person familiar with the matter said it was like a product being produced for one customer but delivered to another. China’s ideology has changed since the project began 20 years ago, the person said, meaning some of the theoretical frameworks used by historians are no longer valid or politically correct.
China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, which oversees the project, did not respond to a request for comment.
In Chinese history, there is a tradition of “Yi Dynasty Compilation of History”. Each dynasty compiles an official history book of the previous dynasty. This tradition can be traced back to ancient times. The CCP first explored the idea of compiling a history of the Qing Dynasty in the early days of Mao Zedong’s rule, with the aim of replacing the incomplete “Manuscript of the History of the Qing Dynasty” published in 1928. With the support of Premier Zhou Enlai, the compilation project of “Qing History” began to take shape, but was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976.
In 2002, party leaders revived the project, responding to lobbying from influential scholars including Dai Yi, a respected Qing history expert at Renmin University of China. Dai Yi later became the first director of the National Committee for the Compilation of Qing History.
Scholars involved in the “Qing History” project said they documented everything from politics and territorial issues to finances under the Qing dynasty. The manuscript also discusses Qing Dynasty literature, opera, performing arts such as acrobatics and juggling, and famous craftsmen of the time. Dai Yi said in an interview with a Chinese newspaper in 2019: “What we hope to present to people is a comprehensive and rich book with detailed information.”
Dai Yi and his colleagues spent years identifying errors in early manuscripts, including a typographical error that gave the birth date of a Manchu prince 18 years before his father.
One of Dai Yi’s deputies recalled in a 2021 article that Dai Yi insisted that the manuscript should analyze the Qing Dynasty’s rule of border areas from the perspective of maintaining national unity. The deputy wrote that in response to the South China Sea arbitration case that arose after the Philippines launched a legal challenge to the Chinese government’s territorial claims in the South China Sea in 2013, Dai Yi asked to add a paragraph on maritime affairs. The content of the question explains how the Qing Dynasty exercised sovereignty and jurisdiction over these waters and related islands, which is consistent with the Chinese government’s narrative.
Xi Jinping’s influence is too great to ignore. According to Dai Yi, Xi Jinping, who serves as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, pays close attention to the “History of the Qing Dynasty” project and has inquired about the progress of the work several times. Dai Yi also said that he had submitted materials to Xi Jinping for review. In 2016, Xi Jinping instructed the Qing History compilation team to speed up the work while maintaining strict quality inspections. Dai Yi recalled that he therefore told senior colleagues to review chapters that included sensitive issues such as borders, maritime affairs, ethnicity, religion, and diplomacy. More stringent.
At the end of 2018, Dai Yi’s team submitted the newly revised “History of the Qing Dynasty” to the superior department for review. According to relevant promotional materials, the official review began the following year, and the review work was hosted by the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Chinese Academy of History, which have official backgrounds. The Chinese Academy of History is an institution established under Xi Jinping’s instructions and is led by an expert on Qing history. According to the promotional materials, Xi Jinping told the reviewers to ensure “quality first, excellence and strict control.”
More than 2,000 people participated in the compilation of “History of the Qing Dynasty”. The latest manuscript of “History of the Qing Dynasty” has increased from the original 92 volumes to 103 volumes, with approximately 32 million words.
According to official media and related promotional materials, about 130 experts were assigned to review the manuscript, and they issued a review report in 2023, which itself contained 1.3 million words.
People familiar with the “Qing History” project said reviewers said the manuscript should emphasize that Qing rulers ruled a unified, multi-ethnic country. This argument helps China justify its current rule over vast territories inhabited by Mongols, Tibetans, Uyghurs and other non-Han groups.
Another criticism focused on the manuscript’s description of how Western powers shaped China’s political change. Reviewers said they wanted to downplay Western influence on Qing political reforms while emphasizing the negative impact of foreign imperialism on Chinese society, people familiar with the matter said.
The Chinese Academy of History did not respond to inquiries.
These demands reflect the Chinese government’s resistance to some Qing historians, especially those in the United States, who have written works that contradict the CCP’s narrative using sources in non-Chinese languages such as Manchu and Uyghur. Many of these scholars describe the Qing Dynasty as a Manchu-led empire that conquered China by defeating the Han-led Ming Dynasty and continued to annex territory now considered China’s frontier.
Pamela Kyle Crossley, a Qing history expert at Dartmouth College, said Xi Jinping objects to portraying the Qing dynasty as a conquering empire because it could fuel separatist sentiment in border regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang and fuel calls for formal independence for the self-ruled island of Taiwan. voice.
“According to Xi Jinping, there is no experience of conquest in Chinese history. There is only a happy unification with a people who aspire to be Chinese,” Crossley said.
It’s unclear when “Qing History” might be published. According to a count by The Wall Street Journal, more than a dozen senior historians involved in the project have passed away. For example, Dai Yi passed away at the end of January this year at the age of 97. There are dozens more involved in the project. historian is over 80 years old. People familiar with the matter said the National Committee for the Compilation of Qing History must now decide whether to bring in new scholars and how much content needs to be rewritten.
Mark Elliott, a China historian and Qing expert at Harvard University who has met with some of the key members of the project, said that when compilation of the masterpiece first began, “although the project was always in the service of politics academic projects, but academic research still comes first.” “Now that politics is at the forefront, these scholars are given chapters that are of no use to them.”
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