About two weeks ago I posted an entry about one of my students, one of my best students, joking about killing “those who do not remember history,” a reference to the Japanese. That post provoked the best discussion this blog has seen in its short lifespan, and I’ve been thinking about ways to follow up. The comments, eight of them, a record for this blog, came in over a week, and I’ve been meaning to respond, to keep the discussion going, because it’s one I find deeply fascinating.

At the root of it, I think, is a question of history and identity, concepts I’ve found compelling since my undergraduate days in Santa Cruz. I’m still getting a handle on Chinese ideas of nationalism and self-awareness.

Two comments in particular struck me as worth following up in a separate post:

Josh said…

I think that IHT article says as much about the weaknesses of Wikipedia or the failures of democratic/participatory systems as it does about Chinese revisionism.

One of the other China bloggers (can’t remember who) recently dusted off this essay by Jaron Lanier from Edge called “Digital Maoism” that was pretty interesting.

I also have problems with the tone of the article. Why is the failure to mention the Malay connection from 4,000 years ago so significant to the writer?

I go back and forth on Wikipedia. I’d never use it as my only source in a column, primarily because it can be made incorrect so easily, and there’s never any guarantee that someone will fix it. That’s all for another post, though.

And I get that Howard French isn’t winning many popularity contests among China expats these days. And Dave’s critique on TPD makes some strong points. Put all that aside for a moment.

Here’s what I see in the Wikipedia article, and here’s what I see in my classroom every day: Students hate to stand out. They don’t want to give an opinion on anything remotely controversial, they don’t want to stutter their way through a wrong answer and lose face in front of their peers, and they don’t want to show off too much and embarrass the rest of their classmates who haven’t studied.

They equate uniformity with safety.

Now, before anyone leaves a comment saying that this happens everywhere, think back to grade school. Remember the kid who always knew the answer, who always had his hand up first? Is that kid’s Chinese counterpart in any of your classes?

There may be a debate happening about Taiwan or Mao or the one-party system going on in Chinese circles. I don’t expect to ever be in those circles to find out first hand. But I’m not in elite networks in any other country either, and yet I know or can easily find out what debates exist, where the lines are (generally) drawn, who’s on whose side.

Here, politics doesn’t seem to exist in the public sphere, so when Wikipedia becomes available, I suspect there is a deep reticence to include mention of all the complexities that come with national icons who nearly ruin nations, provinces that may or may not be under your control, or a government that can’t be fixed from outside but hasn’t fixed itself from within. The debates are happening, somewhere I’m sure, but whether they are ever acknowledged in public remains a separate matter.

…

Lately, when I’ve had questions about Chinese identity, I’ve poked my head into the Granite Studio. As usual, J. got me thinking with his comment here:

I think the kind of self-censorship, as seen in Wikipedia, has a lot to do with national pride as well. There’s still not the tradition of self-criticism (ironically, enough) of the historical narrative in China.

It’s such a huge part of American graduate history programs: the rewriting of the narrative in ways ever more critical of past events. And this angers many people in the US as much as in China. (Witness the recent Florida bill to mandate the teaching of history “without interpretation.”)

People want to believe that they come from a noble past and the historical record doesn’t always shake out that way. Self-censorship and selective memory become the key means to preserve that noble past.

If the Chinese ever do start taking a hard look at their own history, in a public way, I’d love to be here to watch.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 1:32 am and is filed under the Dalian life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.