The Role of History in China's View of the World Today

Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, with its extreme emphasis on internal class struggle, universalist 'scientific' Marxist historicism has yielded to a culturally distinctive nationalist approach to history, defining a conceptual and rhetorical orientation for much of China's view of its new involvement with the world. Self-justification by reference to history figures prominently in many Chinese statements about international relations. Because the assumptions underlying China's historical outlook are not well understood by many otherwise well-informed foreign observers, there exists a serious gap in perceptions, so that exaggerated and tendentious claims are often not subjected to appropriate criticism. For example, the year 1840 remains in the official historiography, originally defined in Marxist terms, as the watershed between China's 'ancient' and modern periods. This artificially late date obscures important but currently controversial issues in Chinese politics and international relations.