Review of schools' Chinese history studies divides academics

A proposal to allow schools to merge Chinese history with world history has divided academics.

Under a review aimed at relieving students overburdened with facts, the proposal would allow the option of teaching Chinese history in an international context or continuing to teach it as an independent subject.

Another suggestion from the Curriculum Development Council is that the subject could come under the umbrella of civic education.

But Kwok Siu-tong, a professor in the Chinese University's history department, said: 'National history is a unique thing to a country.

'Chinese history can be expanded to cover world history, but not the other way round. It is essential to teach it in an ethno-centric manner.

'It can come under part of the civic education and be revised as Chinese culture and history but can never be displaced as part of world history.' Dr Tam Man-kwan, a school principal who is drafting the text for the proposed comparative history course defended the move. 'When you reach the chapters about the invasion by Japan and the Opium Wars, you wonder why China did so badly and if Chinese people are really inferior,' he said.