A FEW YEARS AGO, statues of Sun Yat Sen began disappearing from Taiwan’s public parks. In 2004, the Taiwanese government announced it would remove questions about Mainland Chinese geography from its general knowledge exam for civil servants. And last fall, the government renamed the country’s largest international airport. Once named for the Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai Shek, it is now simply called Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, after the county where is it is located.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s latest initiative has ruffled more feathers of officials on the Mainland and in the KMT opposition bloc: Revised high school history textbooks will for the first time devote an entire volume to “Taiwanese” history. The People’s Republic of China, previously referred to in classrooms as “our country,” “this country,” or “the mainland,” will be identified as “China,” and its history will be condensed from two or three volumes down to one.