Summary of my PhD dissertation: Dissecting the Chinese historical narrative

A quantitative and qualitative analysis of ideological roles of women, ethnic minorities, and businesspeople in Chinese junior high school history textbooks

China’s state ideology has changed considerably since the time of Mao. There has been a transition, particularly since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms of the 1980s, from a more orthodox form of Communism into something called ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. There has been considerable discussion about what that ideology entails exactly, or what its importance is to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However, understanding it is crucial to make sense of China’s current place in the world. This research, therefore, attempts to increase our understanding of how China’s state ideology changed between the foundation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 and today, how these changes relate to the underlying social context, and what the implications are for China’s present and future, in particular the legitimacy of the CCP.

Instead of looking at direct explanations of China’s ideology in official state documents, this study uses high school history textbooks as its source. National historical narratives around the world are continuously adjusted to fit changing ideological goals and needs, and in China it is even openly admitted that history education is essential in instilling ‘correct’ patriotic values in students. Telling ‘the story of the nation’ inevitably requires the translation of ideological values into concrete stories of peoples, places and events, which can be evaded in more direct and theoretical explanations of ideology. Deploying a unique and innovative combination of quantitative and qualitative methods this study is the first to use a near-complete set of 43 Chinese junior high school history textbooks since 1949 with a combined length of 2.3 million characters. There is no self-evident way to ‘distill’ an ideology out of such a large data set, which is even further complicated by the fact that history textbooks at no single point in time produce coherent ideological narratives. Historical narratives instead contain various different, or even conflicting, ideological messages. Therefore, it is an important premise of this study that the ratios in which different messages appear are an important indicator of ideological change. For example, how often businesspeople are depicted as capitalist exploiters and how often as bringers of progress and change. This asks for a different approach than is usually the case in textbook research, in which particular historical events or themes are commonly selected for analysis. Instead, this study starts with a general quantitative analysis of ideological concepts, after which I dissect the historical narrative, as it were, by following three groups of people throughout the narrative: women, ethnic minorities, and business people. They divide Chinese society based on different factors (gender, ethnicity, class) and thus each time emphasize different aspects of the ideology as a whole. Another premise of this research is that the ways in which people are depicted in history books are not only understood as reflections of broader ideological changes, but reversely that their stories are also used to shape that very same ideology.

Developments within the field of the digital humanities offer new opportunities to conduct research such as this. Optical character recognition (OCR) software can easily and relatively quickly convert scanned documents into text, which allows for analyses on a much larger scale. It also enables new ways of analysis, such as determining frequencies of concepts or finding keywords. In linguistics, for example, the keyness of a word is used to determine whether the frequency in a given text deviates significantly from the expected frequency; after all, the most interesting words are not necessarily the most common words. Similar calculations also allow us to find those keywords of which variability in frequency over the years is most significant. Chapter four, therefore, starts with a general quantitative analysis which has resulted in eight ideological terms that most strongly represent ideological changes in textbooks: class, peasant, struggle, revolution, the people, rebellion, landlord, and empire. Most of these concepts are strongly related to the Marxist narrative, and as expected they appear most frequently in the 1960s and 1970s. The analysis produced two other coherent clusters of ideological concepts which represent different ideological shifts: one based on cultural and scientific splendor in the 1990s, and one based on socio-economic and technological progress today. These three main ideological shifts are visually represented in Graph 1 and are based on average keyness values of ideological concepts. This graph is an indication of when ideological shifts occurred and their relative strength. It serves as a point of reference throughout this study, in order to better understand changes in the ways women, ethnic minorities, and businesspeople are depicted.

Graph 1: Three ideological shifts by keyness values

Dissecting the Chinese Historical Narrative

The core of the study consists of three chapters: one for each of the chosen groups of people. All three follow the same basic structure: first, a theoretical introduction of their relation to the state ideology is given, followed by details about data collection and a general quantitative analysis of concepts related to this group. Finally, an analysis is included of paragraphs in which these groups of people appear. On average, this involves about 700 paragraphs of 100,000 characters per case study. The analysis is based on the roles they fulfill in the historical narrative, for example 'the rebel', 'the victim' or 'the danger'. For each case study, the number of roles in which the chosen groups of people appeared were relatively limited: about six to eight per group. The conclusion of each of these chapters includes a graph that visually displays the ratios in which groups of people appeared in certain roles throughout the years. These graphs function, as it were, as an ideological fingerprint of that group’s role in the historical narrative.

The first case study looks at the ways in which women have appeared in the Chinese history textbooks. Women’s roles in historical narratives around the world are considerably less prominent than those of their male counterparts and this also is the case for the Chinese textbooks. In the Chinese context, questions of gender are always secondary to the larger national goals and revolutions, and can never be an ‘end in themselves'. Women appear in the following seven roles in the textbooks: (1) the traditional, as wives, weavers, and mulberry pickers, who symbolize the natural order of Chinese traditional life which later is disturbed by (foreign) threats. (2) The beautiful, whose beauty is used to display the cultural richness of the Chinese empire, but also is stereotypically described as manipulative and corruptive. (3) The bad, based primarily on two great figures in Chinese history: Empress Dowager Cixi and Jiang Qing, head of the Gang of Four and wife of Mao Zedong. (4) The Helpless, in which women are victims of physical and sexual violence. These stories are an important nationalist tool, in which women as victims symbolize the humiliation of the nation at large. (5) The bold, women as heroines who rise up and sacrifice themselves for a higher cause. (6) The skilled, talented women whose achievements have made a significant contribution to the Chinese nation. In the case of women, these are often artists, athletes, or practitioners of traditional women's professions (such as weavers). And finally, (7) the equal, historical narratives that directly discuss aspects of gender equality.

Graph 2a: Roles of women (absolute)

Graph 2b: Roles of women (relative)

Graph 2c: Roles of women (percentage)

Graphs 2a, 2b, and 2c show how the ratios between these roles shift from 1949 until today. The first graph shows the length of the text of paragraphs that address women in this manner. The second graph is corrected for the length of textbooks, so peaks of long editions like the textbooks of 1992 and short ones like those of 1973 are shown in relative terms. The third graph shows only the ratios between these roles as a percentage of the entire text on women. From this, it can be seen that different roles of women are covered relatively consistently throughout the period of the PRC. For example, the proportion of ‘traditional’ and ‘bad’ women does not change significantly. Helpless women constitute the largest category, covering a quarter of all text on women. In this category, we see many women who are victims of sexual or other physical violence where their bodies are symbols of the nation itself. Although these stories of ‘the century of humiliation’ are often considered as important aspects of the Patriotic Education Campaign in the 1990s, this chapter shows that victimized women already appeared in this way much earlier. Strong women in heroic roles appear in a more limited period of time between 1978 and 2001. During this period, there is also space for feminist themes such as gender equality among the Taiping and descriptions of the feminist Qiu Jin. These more progressive descriptions abruptly disappear along with the portrayal of strong female heroines between 2001 and 2003, a period in which the CCP wanted to place less and less emphasis on revolutions and uprisings in general. However, few active roles for women have come in their place. The 1990s and 2000s see female beauty take on a much more important role, coinciding with the ideological shift based on cultural richness and broader societal relaxations in terms of female beauty. The currently used textbooks have seen a significant increase in text about gender equality, but ironically, women themselves play only a very limited role in these narratives and are primarily approached from the ‘male gaze’. The last ideological wave, which focuses on socio-economic progress and technological developments is less visible in this chapter; women, apparently, do not play an important role in this narrative. Female scientists, for example, are very rare. This is noteworthy since female scientists would be a relatively safe option for the party-state to include women in the nation's narrative.

The next chapter discusses ethnic minorities (mínzú). Although non-Han Chinese have traditionally been dismissed in historical narratives as hostile barbarians, they now play a key role in the story of the creation of the multi-ethnic state. Instead of ‘the other’, today they are explicitly described as part of the Chinese nation. However, hostile and threatening mínzú are not completely gone from the historical narrative, so again it is the ratio between different roles that provides insights into how ethnic minorities are thought of ideologically. The following eight roles were found in the textbooks: (1) the threat, the aforementioned hostile outsider who regularly attacks China. This often involves historical groups that are not part of the current system of 55 recognized minorities. (2) The controlled, the threatening outsider that is brought under military or administrative control, thus coming under a Chinese sphere of influence. (3) The Sinified, groups in awe of China's superior culture and subsequently culturally assimilated. (4) The friend, minorities who stand ‘side by side’ with the Han, exchanging goods and ideas, and contributing to a stronger relationship between ‘all the peoples’ within the geographic boundaries of the Chinese empire. (5) The contributor, who has introduced crops, techniques or cultural elements to China, depicting ethnic diversity as a strengthening force. (6) The upriser, who rebels against oppressive elites, playing a crucial role in the overthrow of corrupt and immoral dynasties. (7) The exotic, who displays the cultural ethnic diversity of multi-ethnic China through costumes, dances and songs. (8) The nurtured, who is protected and cared for by the Chinese party-state, and therefore has attained a higher standard of living.

Graph 3a: Roles of mínzú (absolute)

Graph 3b: Roles of mínzú (relative)

Graph 3c: Roles of mínzú (percentages)

Again, some roles show more variation in their frequency than others, as can be seen in Graphs 3a, 3b, and 3c. The roles of mínzú as friends, Sinified, and threats are fairly stable, even though the ways in which they are described do change over time. For example, friendships between ethnic groups show increasingly hierarchical differences. Other roles show more variation, and when compared with the three ideological shifts as identified in chapter 4, it can be seen that ethnic minorities play an important role in narratives of uprisings in Mao's time. In the ‘age of disunion’ (after the Han dynasty) and during the Qing dynasty several large-scale popular uprisings took place, and ethnic minorities play a crucial role in these narratives as they inflicted great damage to the oppressive ruling classes. While scholars generally discern a shift to more inclusiveness in terms of ethnicity, this study adds a number of important nuances to this view. First, mínzú play a more active role in the aforementioned popular uprisings than in any other role found in this study. In addition, the phrase ‘the people of all ethnic groups’ is used much more frequently throughout the historical narrative in earlier textbooks. Also, ethnic integration in this period is seen as being driven by the people: shared struggles between Han and non-Han inevitably caused their integration, while later textbooks emphasize government intervention in this regard. During the economic reforms of the 1980s, a strong emphasis on administrative and military control of China's border areas can be discerned. The role of ‘the controlled’ not only emphasizes the power of the Chinese state but also shows how the geographical borders of the Chinese empire were established. During the 1990s, minorities are increasingly portrayed as the ‘exotic internal other’ and serve as symbols of China's ethnic diversity. This fits well with the ideological shift to a focus on cultural richness at this time, and as was the case with women, there is more room for outward display, such as costumes, songs and dances. The ideological shift focused on socio-economic development and technological progress is also reflected in the portrayal of minorities. As ‘the nurtured’ they receive support and assistance from China, first in the form of education and development, later increasingly through technological advancements. Images of Tibetan farmers watering their land with sophisticated machines thus symbolize what it means to be Chinese today, and it is technology that brings happiness and prosperity.

The final group is that of businesspeople. This group sees the most drastic changes in the ways people are described in the historical narrative between 1949 and today. From despised capitalist oppressors, businesspeople are promoted to bringers of prosperity and change. This becomes directly evident through a quantitative analysis of concepts that have positive or negative associations with business, as shown in Graph 4. Also, there is more attention for businesspeople in ancient history, as can be seen from Graph 5. The following roles of businesspeople have been identified: (1) the exploiter, who within Marxist discourse exploits the people. Large and powerful businesspeople, in particular, cannot be trusted and, together with large landowners, are the main targets of class struggle (2) The imperialist, who according to Lenin represented the highest stage of capitalism, and also initially was seen as causing the ‘century of humiliation’ in which China was attacked again and again by foreign powers. (3) The victim, small-scale and honest business people who themselves are oppressed by their big exploitative counterparts. (4) The upriser, who partakes in uprisings through strikes. Mentioning these businesspeople emphasizes the scale of an uprising, yet the loyalty of these capitalists cannot be fully trusted. (5) The foreign trader, symbol of prosperity and wealth, whose arrival from distant places attests to the greatness of China itself. (6) The Chinese trader, who proves that the seeds of capitalism were present in China even before the Opium War, and who later brings innovation and progress.

Graph 4: Positive and negative concepts in paragraphs about business

Graph 5: Periodization of text about businesspeople

Normative shifts in how business people are evaluated, as mentioned above, are less ambiguous than in the other two case studies, and it is relatively easy to distinguish ?positive and negative roles (see Graphs 6a, 6b, and 6c). In the Maoist period, businesspeople are mainly portrayed as exploiters and oppressors who cannot be trusted, especially ‘big’ ones are invariably displayed in strongly negative ways. Foreign businesspeople are often feared in the early years of the PRC, and imperialism is perceived as largely driven by individual capitalist businesspeople rather than the later common narrative in which states are the main actors. After Deng Xiaoping's reforms, there is a cautious increase in positive evaluations of business people, such as strikers, who now appear in narratives of uprisings. In the 1990s there is a more dramatic increase in positive depictions of businesspeople, who are now increasingly displayed as bringers of wealth and progress. The arrival of foreign traders is now also explicitly linked to the greatness of the Chinese empire. Their ‘footsteps’ in the cosmopolitan cities of China confirm the status of the state at large. These descriptions of cosmopolitan cities and progressive attitudes toward traders can additionally be seen as an expression of the ideological emphasis on cultural splendor of this era. Chinese traders play a role in this narrative in a slightly different way than foreign businesspeople did. With Chinese businesspeople, more emphasis is placed on innovation, such as their role in the invention of paper money. Especially after 2001, when business people and other capitalists under the influence of Jiang Zemin's ideology are embraced as part of the Chinese nation and even allowed to join the party, a change can be found again. Even ‘big’ businessmen are now something to be proud of, and there is room for national pride based on entrepreneurship and innovation. For example, in the current textbooks, there is considerable attention for a trademark advertisement from the Song dynasty, which is considered the first of its kind in the world and had not been included in textbooks until now. However, the emancipation of businesspeople also experiences a setback: in fact, economic and business themes are increasingly dominated by the state as the main actor, and businesspeople are slowly but surely disappearing from the narrative. The Belt and Road Initiative is a good example of this. This megalomaniac project is confidently presented in the history books, but businesspeople themselves are not even mentioned in it once.

Graph 6a: Roles of businesspeople (absolute)

Graph 6b: Roles of businesspeople (relative)

Graph 6c: Roles of businesspeople (percentages)

Ideology and China’s future

Dissecting the Chinese national historical narrative has revealed that ideology indeed is omnipresent in Chinese history textbooks. All three case studies show that textbook editors have selected from an infinite amount of historical facts and created meaningful patterns from them in the form of constantly changing narratives. It can even be said that these historical narratives say more about the Chinese nation to which the three selected groups of people are supposed to belong to, than about the groups themselves: raped women symbolize the humiliation of the nation; the inclusion of ethnic minorities proves that the Chinese state was always a multiethnic one; and the arrival of foreign traders confirms the greatness of the Chinese empire. These stories not only reflect ideological changes but also help to construct the Chinese nation itself.

Thus, while official descriptions of Chinese state ideology are detached from the broader social context, the same cannot be said for the ideology as represented in textbooks, as it is woven into the fabric of the historical narrative. Changes in history books parallel the changing vision of the party-state, so ideological messages that are communicated in them are not merely ‘empty rhetoric’, but are instead connected to the social context surrounding them. An emancipation of businesspeople has also taken place in the ‘real’ China, as has the emphasis on technological advancement in China's borderlands. Another parallel to the social context discernible throughout the books is that of a declining agency of the people. Whereas in Marxist narratives the people were indisputably the driving force of history, this has increasingly shifted towards a focus on the party-state, which now is the undisputed protagonist of history. This process has its parallel in the recent silencing of multiple voices in Chinese society: the party-state has in recent years taken effective action against feminism and ethnic disturbances, and currently, it is the powerful tech giants who increasingly find themselves under scrutiny.

Individual historical descriptions may be plentiful and diverse and sometimes contrasting each other, but the important ideological messages underlying them are very consistent: the party-state is China, and without it, China will collapse. Even if students do not literally ‘believe’ these historical accounts in the history books reflect ‘the truth’, this message is very influential nonetheless. Yet pointing the spotlight so clearly towards themselves also puts more pressure on the party-state. The question is whether the Chinese people remain satisfied with this passive and insignificant position in the national narrative in the long run, when things might not go as well for the country. To quote Shambaugh (2008), I would call this, at the very least, a bet against history, going against the historical trend.

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