The Importance of Strengthening Australian Studies in World History Teaching in China’s Universities and Colleges and the Reflection of the Missing Parts of Australia and Oceania in Textbooks

Abstract

Australia is an important country within Asia-Pacific region. Since 1970s-1980s, with the orientation of the international economy, as a big country famous for its agriculture, stockbreeding and mineral resources and immigration, the economic and political status of Australia within Asia-Pacific region is becoming more and more significant and Australia has a closer relationship with China . The number of Chinese scholars researching Australia is increasing. Although the history of Australia itself is short, many significant historical events really made tremendous influence on the development of world history, bearing the special historic status. Lecturing and researching Australian history will do good to recognize the trend of economic globalization and regional integration, help to comprehend the fact that the world history is an inter-independent whole gradually formed by all parts of region and ethnics all over the world and thus advance the development of bilateral relationship and Australian-Asian relations. However, for subjective and objective reasons, the history of Europe, Northern America, Asia, Africa and Latin America are dominated in the world history teaching in China, taking little notice of Australia in textbooks and having insufficient class hours and deficient contents. Based on the author’s long-term research and teaching, this article mainly refer to the following three aspects: 1. The importance of strengthening Australian studies in world history teaching in China’s Universities and Colleges. 2. Arguments of the missing parts of Australia and Oceania in world history textbooks in China’s Universities and Colleges.3. Some suggestions and survey proposal