Excerpts from “The Hundred-Year Marathon” book Part 2

Starting in 1990, Chinese textbooks were rewritten to depict the United States as a hegemon that, for more than 150 years, had tried to stifle China’s rise and destroy the soul of Chinese civilization. This reeducation effort was placed under the innocuous label of the “National Patriotic Education Program.” Mr. White, the defector, had predicted that this program would bring back the distorted versions of American history that had lain dormant since the earliest days of Mao’s regime—well before the overtures to the United States.

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Left unmentioned is that China’s victory in World War II depended on the military intervention of the “Western Capitalist countries” whom the exhibit casts as villains; that American investments and the American market were indispensable to the growth of China’s skyrocketing exports; and that China’s technological progress depended on nearly one hundred agreements with the United States for scientific exchange programs. Instead, the only large photo I saw of any Americans showed civilians disrespecting the emperor a century ago by sitting on the Forbidden City’s imperial throne during the Boxer Rebellion. There was no contextual explanation of why Americans were in China, and the visitor is left with the impression that their primary purpose was to subjugate and humiliate China.

Source: The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (2015) by Michael Pillsbury.