The publication analyzes the organizational and meaning aspects of the current reform of historical textbooks in today's Chinese secondary school. The context for its implementation is ambitious foreign policy projects of the Chinese government, such as the “Belt and Road” initiative, as well as the desire to develop their own ideological strategy for positioning China in the domestic and foreign arena. Two themes dominate the internal political discourse of modern China: the initial involvement of China in regional and world trade and cultural exchanges and the inviolability of national sovereignty. China wants to see itself open to the outside world and involved in global political, economic and cultural processes. However, this openness and involvement is realized on the conditions set by China, the central of which is national sovereignty and a very jealous attitude to the issue of the safety of land, and now sea borders.