Beijing’s apparent crackdown on Taiwanese textbooks aims to sever ties between the children of Taiwanese businesspeople in China and their native Taiwan, academics said yesterday.
Chinese customs on Sunday released a video of officers seizing a shipment of Taiwanese textbooks sent from Taiwan, claiming they contained “problematic maps” that incorrectly label “the Chinese province of Taiwan” as an independent country and do not include territories such as the Diaoyu Islands (釣魚台) and South Tibet (the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh) within China’s borders, violating the “one China” principle.
Screenshot from a video released by China Customs
Academics yesterday said that China had previously “turned a blind eye” to the content of Taiwanese textbooks.
However, Beijing now aims to sever ties between the children of Taiwanese businesspeople in China and Taiwan, Taiwan Thinktank researcher Wu Se-chih (吳瑟致) said, adding that he fears only patriotic educational materials would be available in the future.
China has never previously adopted strict surveillance of educational books or printed materials, and has allowed the use of Taiwanese textbooks in Taiwanese schools in China, Wu said.
These exceptions were not unusual, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wanted to appease Taiwanese businesspeople to ensure their continued local investment, he said.
However, this latest seizure of textbooks shows that the CCP no longer wants to maintain this “gray area,” Wu added.
Wu said he believes that had recent Taiwanese investment in China been more substantial, the CCP would not have taken these measures.
However, as more Taiwanese are leaving China and Taiwanese investment is rapidly declining, it is possible that the CCP no longer recognizes the importance of Taiwanese schools in China, and so has begun gradually adding pressure, Wu said.
This latest development reflects the predicament faced by China in losing Taiwanese businesspeople, he added.
Hung Chin-fu (洪敬富), a professor of political science at National Cheng Kung University, said CCP officials had previously maintained a level of tolerance and allowed the use of Taiwanese textbooks in China’s three Taiwanese schools in Shanghai, Dongguan and Huadong.
Now the need to respect the “one China” principle shows that, in a time of fervent Chinese nationalism, Taiwanese educational materials are beyond what the CCP is willing to tolerate, he added.
The Taiwanese textbooks’ descriptions of national sovereignty and a democratic, constitutional political system make the CCP uneasy, Hung said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) wants to draw a clear party line and there would no longer be room for any “gray area,” he said.
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