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SCMP Reporter

Young history scholars and future teachers from across the mainland are to gather in Beijing next month for a series of lectures aimed at  reviving the study of world history.

Eight renowned historians from China and one from the US will address more than 50 masters and doctorate students as well as university lecturers in a three-week course sponsored by the State Council to be held in Beijing  from mid-July.

Yue Fengqin, a programme co-ordinator from Beijing University's history department, said the Ministry of Education was concerned that scholarship on world history was under threat.  'Many Chinese universities have dropped the subject as a major. The numbers of both teachers and students are decreasing,' Ms Yue said.

'No dissertation on the subject has won a national award in the past five years.'

Lectures for the course, which will focus on methodology, American history and major issues, will be open to the public.

Li Hui, 30, a graduate of Beijing Foreign Studies University who will attend the programme, said he was dissatisfied with history education in China.

'The limited courses I've taken are mostly knowledge-oriented, but I also want methodologies and different perspectives,' he said.

This was what the programme would provide, Wang Xi, a professor from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, said.

'These students may become teachers and scholars so their perspectives are important,' said Professor Wang, who studied for his PhD at Columbia and undertook postdoctoral studies in American history at Harvard.

'My job is to tell students how history is studied in the west and help them gain new insight.'

China's world history education has been heavily slanted by Marxism, Professor Wang said. 'For example, the American constitution has been regarded as a bourgeois tool and America is studied as a model of class struggle.'

The course was an experiment made necessary by China's growing international involvement, according to Professor Wang. 'With globalisation, the country needs to expand its contacts with the world,' he said.

'American history has been offered only in a few Chinese universities. In contrast, many US universities teach Chinese history and run China studies centres.'

But he is the only academic invited from outside the country. He said this was probably because of his Chinese background. 'I am both an insider and an outsider,' said Professor Wang, who taught history at Beijing University before going to the US 18 years ago.

'The way I teach would be different from Americans,' he said.

Mei Renyi, who teaches American diplomatic history at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said mainland historians had been moving away from Marxist dogma by spending time outside the country. 'Now we have come to another stage. We need to have our own understanding of world history.'

He hoped the course would contribute to the dialogue.

But the subject was a victim of market forces, he said. Many history departments had closed because their graduates were not faring well in the jobs market.

'Many Chinese enterprises have a very narrow view. They don't know what a history graduate can do,' he said.

The history curriculum - Chinese and international - had also been cut in secondary schools, taught over just two or three terms.



Course to boost study of world history