Romantic or enlightened? A sentiment analysis on Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong history textbooks

Emotion in history textbooks shapes citizens’ historical consciousness. This study uses sentiment analysis to compare emotional patterns in history textbooks from the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong. The results reveal that: (1) the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong history textbooks have different emotion words that seem to map various narrative features; (2) the Chinese Mainland generally exhibited stronger emotional intensity compared to Hong Kong; (3) the Chinese Mainland history textbooks showed significantly higher intensity of good emotions than Hong Kong from the establishment of the People’s Republic of China to the end of the twentieth century. The Chinese Mainland textbooks peaked in disgust emotions during the Opium War to the Xinhai Revolution, while the Hong Kong textbooks maintained a more restrained approach. These findings suggest that the Chinese Mainland may tend toward a Romantic approach while Hong Kong may tend toward an Enlightened one.