I had a history teacher senior year in high school whose entire curriculum was more or less covering the various communist regimes. We spent several months going over The Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward. It was a very informative class in retrospect.
I think it’s because there’s over a million Chinese in Aus (>1/27th of the population), and they’re also our biggest “trading partner”, so…
China weighs heavy on the Australian psyche. As does Indo, of course.
Whereas, despite us having the largest Japanese prison breakout in WW2 (Cowra), Japanese internment camps don’t feature in our psyche/historical narrative anywhere as much as (in my understanding, at least) they do in the US, say…
Edit: it’s also worth mentioning that many, many Tiananmen survivors and/or Hong Kongers moved here, after 1989, so that 100% plays a role, too. Similar with South Africans post ‘94…
Does even Hitler have a course dedicated to just him?
The way pretty much all 20th Century history is taught revolves around him on some level.
Or Mao. At least in Aus, they really, really like talking about Mao…
I can think of a few reasons why that might be…
Mao hardly gets a mention in America.
I had a history teacher senior year in high school whose entire curriculum was more or less covering the various communist regimes. We spent several months going over The Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward. It was a very informative class in retrospect.
I think it’s because there’s over a million Chinese in Aus (>1/27th of the population), and they’re also our biggest “trading partner”, so…
China weighs heavy on the Australian psyche. As does Indo, of course.
Whereas, despite us having the largest Japanese prison breakout in WW2 (Cowra), Japanese internment camps don’t feature in our psyche/historical narrative anywhere as much as (in my understanding, at least) they do in the US, say…
Edit: it’s also worth mentioning that many, many Tiananmen survivors and/or Hong Kongers moved here, after 1989, so that 100% plays a role, too. Similar with South Africans post ‘94…
yes, shit's catnip to them