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A Short Course in Writing Chinese History
官方史学家十分钟速成
On 1 June 2009, the Chinageeks website published a satirical catechism of how to write official modern Chinese history today. It was a translation by C. Custer of a piece that appeared in late May on the 'Henhuang Henbaoli' blog (很黄很暴力), see: https://hen.bao.li/. In keeping with the year's theme of anniversaries and commemorations, we are reproducing the translation here under its translated title, 'Government Historians' Ten Minute Speed Program'.—The Editor
1. People in history can be fundamentally divided into two kinds: 'good people' and 'bad people'.
2. In history, the working class were all always good people; the ruling class were always bad people.
3. Historically, the working class was always industrious, courageous, intelligent, and correct; the ruling class was always lazy, weak, stupid, and wrong.
4. In history, war hawks were all national heroes, every war they advocated was correct and patriotic, the peace advocates were degenerate scum and traitors to China, every time they advocated for peace it was a mistake and selling out China.
5. Historically, whenever there was conflict between the Han people and ethnic minorities, [it was because] the ethnic minorities had invaded. The Han generals were national heroes. Whenever there was conflict between China and foreign countries, [it was because] the foreign countries invaded. The generals resisting the invasion were national heroes.
6. In China before 1949, everyone who broke the laws, every thief and murderer was a rebel opposing the wicked ruling party. After 1949, they were all class enemies, counterrevolutionaries, and after 1976 they were criminals.
7. The collapse of every single dynasty was because of the corruption of the ruling class.
8. At the beginning of every dynasty new ruling measures were adopted that were a step forward and should be regarded as positive; whatever measures they adopted towards the end were reactionary and should be firmly condemned.
9. Before every peasant uprising in history was revolutionary activity, but afterwards they all became morally degenerate.
10. In history, aside from [those waged by] the leaders of the Party, the eventual result of every revolution has been defeat.
11. Every revolution failed because of lack of correct guidance on political theory, making the mistake of leaning too far left or right, not first joining the Party leadership, not founding and consolidating a worker-peasant alliance, etc. If it's not one of those reasons, it's definitely that the counterrevolutionary forces were too strong, Chinese and foreign counterrevolutionary forces united to strengthen the effort.
12. Every Chinese scientific invention came at least a few years earlier than [it was invented] in Europe (if Europe had it first then don't mention it at all).
13. In recent times, the reason China is undeveloped is that imperialists strongly invaded and frenziedly looted, the reason these imperialist countries were strong is that they looted other countries.
14. The governments of capitalist countries generally regard us with hostility, the people of capitalist countries will never be friendly to us.
15. It is the inevitable trend of history that capitalism will fall, the failure of socialism is just a complication along the road forward.
16. Our current policy is always wise and correct, old policies were definitely flawed and mistaken. When 'current' becomes 'old', the now-current policies will accordingly become flawed and mistaken.
This translation can be found at: http://sun-zoo.com/chinageeks/2009/06/01/government-historians-ten-minute-speed-program/
The original version is at: http://hen.huang.hen.bao.li/2009/05/blog-post_28.html
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