Chinese students to learn about 1962 India-China war in latest history books

New Delhi: New Chinese history textbooks to be rolled out for school students next month includes information about the 1962 India-China war, media reports said on Wednesday as Beijing focusses on strengthening a sense of national security among its citizens and pushes to embed President Xi Jinping’s political and economic philosophy in society.

The textbooks – which also contain a rare mention of the 1979 China-Vietnam war – will be distributed from the upcoming autumn semester in Chinese schools to students in the first and seventh grades, a report in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) said, citing national broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV).

“The new history textbooks will include the brief but bloody border war in 1962 between China and India, which ended with India’s defeat after four weeks,” the SCMP report said without sharing details about what and how much information about the war will be in the books.

A Chinese education ministry official said the new content would “allow students to deeply understand that national security is a top priority and that everyone has a responsibility to safeguard it”.

Inclusion of information on the 1962 war comes in the backdrop of the ongoing border tension between the two Himalayan neighbours in the western sector, triggered after a standoff between border troops in May, 2020, followed by a deadly clash in eastern Ladakh’s Galwan Valley in June that year.

The clash along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) left 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead, plunging bilateral ties to the lowest level since the 1962 war. Several rounds of diplomatic and military talks have failed to fully resolve the ongoing tension and both sides continue to deploy thousands of troops and heavy weaponry along the LAC in eastern Ladakh.

To be sure, China rarely brings up the 1962 war in official narratives though it has intermittently allowed the ongoing tension, especially videos of the brutal Galwan Valley clash, to be circulated on social media.

In October 22, Chinese authorities played People’s Liberation Army (PLA) footage of the Galwan Valley clash at the Communist Party of China’s 20th national congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

The SCMP report said the 1979 China-Vietnam conflict will feature in the new history books. “Some 300,000 Chinese troops entered Vietnam to prevent Hanoi from overthrowing the Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia”, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides.

Like with India, China has a border dispute with Vietnam. It claims nearly the entire South China Sea, a claim disputed by several maritime neighbours including Vietnam, Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia besides Taiwan.

Among topics highlighted in the new textbooks on language, morality and law is “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”, enshrined in China’s constitution in 2018, the SCMP report added.

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