Awhile ago (1/28/03) Anthony Kuhn wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the Education Ministry had issued secondary school curricula instructing that Yue Fei was no longer to be considered a national hero. Also stripped of hero status was Song Prime Minister Wen Tianxiang, who was captured and executed by invading Mongols.

The government's logic was that centuries of wars against nomads of the Central Asian steppes were little more than "domestic squabbles" among China's own ethnic groups. The status of national heroes, it asserted, should be reserved for those who fought real foreigners, such as the Dutch or Japanese.

People are still discussing this.