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ID:
130435
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
The Chinese Communist Party has often used history as a tool to serve its political purposes. This article analyzes the ways in which mythological accounts have been manipulated in order to strengthen Beijing's control over the restive northwestern province of Xinjiang. Relying on an analysis of various materials (including museum exhibitions, textbooks and travel guides), I explore how the figures of the Queen Mother of the West and King Mu of the Zhou have been used to assert that Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of China since prehistoric times. The materials analyzed treat mythological texts as valid sources of geographical and historical data, whereas Western scholars largely agree that these cannot provide any reliable information of this kind. In accordance with the tradition of early commentators, I define this approach as euhemeristic, in that it treats mythological accounts as a reflection of historical events.
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2 |
ID:
170219
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Summary/Abstract |
On the basis of a natural experiment related to the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, the present work empirically analyzes the relationship between historical events and current attitude and determines whether regions that suffered severely during the Japanese invasion in World War II expressed small concern during the earthquake. After controlling for geographical distance, bilateral trade, and political characteristics, a negative relationship is found between the duration of invasion and number of related deaths in the invaded regions and their governments’ efforts in assisting Japan after the earthquake. Further analysis shows that political similarity to Japan helped in assisting them after the earthquake, but this effect was reduced for regions that sustained many deaths during the Japanese invasion. In addition, a mediation effect test shows that the help extended by Japan to several countries after the war through the Japanese official development assistance did not positively influence the amount of aid provided by such regions to Japan after the earthquake. These studies provide new evidence of the long-lasting influence of war. However, no robust evidence is found about the relationship between death rate and war memory. Therefore, even large countries cannot tolerate serious suffering during painful historical events.
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