A sea of bamboo in Sichuan Province offers visitors a scenic respite from Page 16 the city.
These little beams are the secondmost traded commodity in the world. Page 14
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 19 2003
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“Because I am a man, I feel I should be even more careful.” Page 9
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Sixth High-tech Expo Winds Down By Xiao Rong he Sixth China Beijing High-tech Expo closed on Monday, with agreements reached on 200 cooperative and technological exchange projects and contracts worth US $4.68 billion signed. The four-day expo featured contributions from 85 foreign governmental organizations, enterprise delegations and foreign commercial organizations from 45 countries, as well as over 2,000 foreign scientists, entrepreneurs and scholars. The closing ceremony was a highlight, with the organizing committee naming the “top hot spots” of the expo, as voted by foreign media. The most popular exhibition areas were those focusing on equipment and technology, like the Digital Olympics display and the Century Building International Integrated Housing Exhibition. The hottest forum was the International Forum on High-growth Enterprises and Financial Markets, and the most successful trade talk was the International Investment Projects Talk. The annual exhibition, centered at the China International Exhibition Hall, focused on cutting edge technology in areas such as Olympic construction projects, IT, biological and medical industries, environmental protection, and modern manufacturing. A total of 325 investment bidding projects worth around $16 billion were introduced. Twenty-five infrastructure projects with a total expected investment of $4.68 billion have been the heavyweights of the package. Unlike previous years, trade talks on high-tech and economic projects have been the focus of the sixth expo, with the exhibition and exchange activities also recommending key projects. Fifty key projects covering urban water recycling, garbage collection and disposal, and subway and highway construction dominated the “Key Project Recommendations for Beijing Urban Development”. The seventh session of the high-tech expo is scheduled to be held from May 22 to 26 next year. (See reports pages 5 – 8)
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Service staff packed up at the Beijing International Conference Center.
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By Yu Shanshan he history of each Chinese dynasty has been recorded by its successor, a tradition that began with the classic “Historical Records” of Western Han Dynasty historian Sima Qian. These records, numbering 24 in total, and known as the Ershisishi, or Twenty Four Histories, form a series of continuous dynastic histories, unique in the world, ending with the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). With the history of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), China’s last feudal dynasty, left untold, many experts since the founding of new China have repeatedly urged that this missing leaf in a work that spans millenia be completed. In December 2002, the central government decided that the time had come to tackle the mamoth project. A daunting prospect The fact that the committee in charge of compiling the histroy has spent the nine months since the work started determining two basic parameters – the type of literature that will serve as source material and the stylistic guidelines, give an indication of what an enormous task compiling the Qing history is. On August 25, a three-day seminar on the compilation of the history of the Qing dynasty opened, the tenth since the compilation work began. More than 40 noted scholars, researchers and experts from the mainland and across the Taiwan Straits attended. The 25-member committee plans to compile the 100-volumehistory over a ten-year-period. When complete, it will contain some 30 million words, more than in all of the twenty-four earlier histories combined. According to the committee’s plan, the project will be divided into two parts. The main project is the actual writing of the almost 30-million-word history; the other is the collecting, arranging and publishing of the Qing Dynasty archives and documents, in itself, an-
other massive project. Dai Yi, the director of the compilation committee and a history professor at Renmin University, said in an interview with China Weekly magazine in March this year “We would not only seek to protect those precious historical documents by compilation, but also try to guarantee the quality of the whole compilation work. The two projects will inform and complement each other.” The government has listed the compilation as a key culture project. A Qing History Compilation Leadership Group was formed immediately after the founding of the academic committee to assist with the budget and other administrative tasks, headed by minister of culture Sun Jiazheng. The total budget for the history is expected to exceed 100 million yuan, but the government has given assurances that it will ensure all necessary funds are available. “To recompile the Qing dynastic history is the responsibility of our generation. In the future, when people look back to the 21st century to see what China left for posterity, the Qing history must be one of the big things,” Dai said. With modern readers in mind The selection of source material and the stylistic guidelines are the keys to the whole project. The main questions centered on whether or not to continue using the method of Jizhuanti (history presented as a series of biographies) that the twenty-four histories used. After much discussion, the committee decided on “combining the advantages of all types to create a new one.” The “based on the old, and develop a new” approach has also been used to settle some smaller controversies, including the problem of whether to use Wenyanwen (the literature style used in books of ancient China), or Baihuawen (the preferred style since 1919). The final decision was to use simple modern language to write. “We are writing for today’s people. The history is always used as a mirror for contemporary society,” Jiang said.
Photo by Jackey
Writing the History of a Dynasty
Dai Yi, director of the Qing dynastic history compilation committee Photo by Photocome
The new Qing History is to include six parts: Tongji (event records), Biannian (chronicles), Zhi (records on special fields of study), Zhuan (biography), Biao (lists) and Tu (illustrations). The illustrations are to be a highlights of the history, which will utilize numerous maps, portraits, military pictures, oil paintings and photos. In the earlier histories, technological limitations meant that virtually no illustration were used. But there are ample illustrations of all kinds available from the Qing Dynasty. In the Palace Museum alone, there are tens of thousands of photos, 80 percent of which have never been published. Not only the emperor “In years to come, people will quote facts from this history vol-
ume. So we must be responsible, and ensure we record the true history,” said Zhu Chengru, deputy president of the Palace Museum and vice director of the compilation committee. Though there is a leadership group from the central government, historians insist that it is appropriate for the government to simply fund the project, as opposed to becoming directly involved, a view supported by Wang Xiaoqiu. As Dai puts it, “Times have changed. We no longer live under the regime of an emperor – that’s the point.”. This also means that the emphasis of this history will be somewhat different to its predecessors, in that it will be less “emperor-centric.” Wang Xiaoqiu said, “Aside from biographies of
emperors and high officials in the court, we intend to write biographies of people who had an influence in every field; scientists, strategists, thinkers and artists. And there will also be biographies of missionaries and the revolutionaries who toppled the Qing Dynasty.” “The compilation of the history is not merely a technical problem, but should represent this generation’s understanding of history,” said Chen Qitai, history professor of Beijing Normal University, at the Qing dynastic history compilation seminar in May 2001. A zigzag course “We expect the compilation to take ten years to complete, but time is tight,” Dong Jianzhong told Beijing Today in a telephone interview in late August, “Our most eminent specialists in the area of Qing history are all in their sixties and seventies.” The situation is especially significant for one man, 77-year-old Dai Yi. The realization of his dream to compile the Qing history has been delayed almost fifty years. In fact, a 536-volume draft of the Qing dynastic history has already been written. Written by academics who grew up in the Qing Dynasty, it was compiled between 1914 and 1928, during the early Republic of China period. However the government does not recognize the authority of this work as “those academics were still loyal to the Qing court after its fall and their standing can hardly be objective,” says Dai Yi. In 1958, when the central gov-
ernment first considered rewriting the Qing Dynasty history, Dai, then a graduate of the history department of Beijing University, raised the suggestion that the project needed researchers who had studied Qing History. However a severe famine from 1959 to 1961 suspended consideration of the project. In 1965, the government revived the project for the second time. A committee was set up, and Dai was selected as one of the seven committee members. However the work was again interrupted, this time by the Cultural Revolution. Revived again briefly in 1978, only to be cancelled due to a lack of funds, it was not until 2002, when Jiang Zemin visited Renmin University, that Dai Yi and Li Wenhai, then president of the university, saw their dream of almost fifty years finally come to life. “The length of time that has elapsed since the fall of the Qing Dynasty guarantees our objectivity, while decades of research and relevant publications from the mainland, Taiwan and western countries have established a solid foundation for our compilation work.” Li said. Throughout China’s history, there are numerous stories about the hardships suffered by ancient historians as they compiled their histories, and the unshakable belief they held in the importance of their work for later generations. (Continue on page 2) EXECUTIVE EDITOR: ZHANG XIAOXIA EDITOR: YU SHANSHAN DESIGNER: PANG LEI
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