Amigos e inimigos do povo: representações das figuras históricas nos manuais escolares destinadas às gerações pós-80 e pós-90 chinesas

This paper studies two sets of elementary school textbooks of Chinese Literacy created in the context of the Patriotic Education Campaign during the 1980s and 1990s. It aims to unravel the relationship between propaganda and education in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the representations of the ‘friends’ and the ‘enemies’ of Chinese people created by the Chinese Communist Party during this time period. I use critical discourse analysis as the main research method. The present study reveals that the concepts of propaganda and education in the context of the PRC are ontologically interchangeable. The main ‘heroes’ created in this campaign are the Chinese Communist Party leaders, who are portrayed as ‘friends’ or ‘families’ of Chinese people. There also exists an ambiguous but positive representation of Sun Yat-Sen, founder of the Republic of China and the ‘counter-revolutionary’ Chinese Nationalist Party. This ambiguity probably occurs due to the unstable political and economic relationship between the PRC and Taiwan during this period. The ‘enemies’ created in this campaign mainly consist of the nationalist ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and the Japanese invaders. These two groups share similar representations, even though they appear in different historical contexts. These similarities can be explained by the different narratives and collective memories created about the same historical events by Japan and Taiwan during this period.