China's youth has a problem with history too

Filed 41m ago · Via Newsweek · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

One-eyed Maestro

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Press Service of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A viral theory claiming the Tang dynasty, imperial China's celebrated golden age of arts and poetry spanning 618 to 907, was entirely fabricated by historians took hold on Weibo and Bilibili starting in late April. The claim originated with a vlogger who cited his own study of astronomy and calendars, offered no motive, and has since been banned.

State media, cyber censors, and university academics mobilized through the summer to purge the theory and publish rebuttals, with the Communist Party's People's Daily asking in August why 'absurd arguments' capture young people. The conspiracy drew energy from Han nationalist resentment of the Tang rulers' mixed ancestry, an inconvenient detail given China's long history of non-Han dynasties.

The Party has warned for decades against 'historical nihilism,' any interpretation of the past that questions its Marxist-Leninist legacy, and Xi Jinping flagged the risk soon after taking power in 2012. The scrubbing was thorough enough that, online, only the debunkings now remain.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

When a government has to send the cyber police out to prove poetry happened, you have to wonder what else the kids stopped believing first. A country that's spent decades telling people which parts of the past are allowed can't act too surprised when some of them decide none of it is. Scrub hard enough and the only thing left online is the scrubbing.

Source: Read the original at Newsweek → Scored: One-eyed Maestro · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0