Taiwan's high school revised history textbooks were denounced as an attempt to promote Taiwan independence. In the revised textbooks, terms like "our country," "this country" and "the mainland" in the textbooks have been changed to "China". "We've noticed the developments. The political motive behind it is to transform the island's education into an ideological tool for 'Taiwan independence'," Yang Yi, spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said.
Yang also condemned Taiwan's "national palace museum" for removing all the labels that identify over half a million exhibits as originating from the Chinese mainland, calling it a "despicable act". A resolution was adopted by Taiwan's "Executive Yuan" on January 17, barring the museum from identifying its exhibits as transported from the Imperial Palace in Beijing, not ancient Chinese art.
First opened in 1965, the National Palace Museum in Taipei houses 654,500 art works and artifacts that were shipped from Beijing to Taiwan in 1949 when the Nationalists retreated to the island during a civil war. (Source: Chinanews.cn, Feb 1, 2007)