This paper examines the modern transition of historical studies and the impact of national history on modern Chinese textbooks in order to observe ongoing international disputes over history in East Asia today. The main subject here concerns “Zhonghua minzu，” the idea central to the depiction of Chinas national history.
The search for modern historical studies between the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China began against a backdrop of nationalism that arose in the late Qing dynasty. Important is that the conception of such studies was influenced by Meiji Japan’s history of civilization and idea of evolution. Representative of this was Liang Qichao’s appropriation of Japanese concepts and classifications in categorizing the histories of China and East Asia in order to redefine the category of Chinese history and coin the term Zhonghua minzu. This new historiography had great bearing on the shape of new textbooks not only concentrating on the foundation, unification and conquests of a dynasty, but also illustrating its cultural heroes. It is in this process that a Sinocentric distinction between Hua and Yi, as well as historical knowledge produced by modern Japan, had seeped into Chinese textbooks. After the May Fourth Movement, Chinese intellectuals sought to describe their national history based on modern scholarly methods. For example, Gu Jiegang applied anti-traditionalist thoughts to dismantle the unitary, single-rooted nature from the origin of Zhonghua minzu and attempted to put forth a pluralistic narrative encompassing the cultures of all ethnicities. This sort of descriptive tendency held the potential to develop into diverse directions once modernity became established in the methods and system of studying Chinese history. However, the Nationalist Government of China intensified training on nationalism through a centralized education system and curriculum. The leadership of the Han Chinese and their integration of surrounding ethnicities was highlighted over the nation’s ethnic-plurality and cultural diversity. Along with mass mobilization against Japanese invasion during the period, this rationale incorporated Han Chinese into Zhonghua minzu and subsumed the history of northeastern China and the northern part of the Korean peninsula under the history of China.
To conclude, modern Chinese nationalism consistently affected the development of national history that accepted the nationalist historiography of modern Japan, promoted the idea of Zhonghua minzu sufficient to assimilate minor ethnicities, and legitimated the political necessity of defending China’s borderlands against Japanese imperialism. Hence, it is necessary to understand the perception of history in China’s Northeast Project as a knowledge system formed over a lengthy process throughout modem China.