Unit nine: Modern China

This month, we just finished the unit of modern China at school. I like this unit, I feel like this unit is the one that I payed most attention with, and it’s the unit I spent most time on till now.

However, I did saw biases in this unit. What I learned from here is very different from what I learned before. For example, what I learned from my Chinese public school’s history class, we talked about how Cultural Revolution before, but not much. Even though we know that this is a pretty controversial topic, we are taught that this event isn’t just about negative impact, and in fact, positive influences are more than negativities. Cultural revolution, for us, is one of the most significant movement that had lead the essential step of modern China. In this circumstance when I learned about it here, it’s making students thinking that Mao is negative character who’s being overly desiring for power. He killed people with words, he stopped China from developing, and he’s being very idealism.

In this unit, we had an assessment which we did a debate. The debate topic is pretty much like if Mao Zedong and Jiang Jieshi are both alive and they saw today’s China, who will be more satisfied with today’s overall environment. I’m on the side which Mao will be more satisfied (I think my teacher put me on that side on purpose, I don’t look like I will agree with the pro side sentimentally).

The debate had been stunning. It went well, and I was shocked by the two opponent. It feels like listening to a new history that’s different from what I’ve learned. They are pretty much saying that Jiang is the person who united China, he’s the one who’s desiring for peaceful and who achieved it. I asked them a lot of questions after they made their statement (the teacher want us to only ask clarification questions and no attacking is allowed), which from that conversation, I can see how their claim wasn’t just about the debate but they truly believe what they had said.

I suddenly understand why my mom have conflicts with her friends around the topic of government and countries. Discussion around politics actually will lead to fights.