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  • The Economist had a similar article [1] about Han chauvinism leading to rejection of the Qing dynasty, and causing quite a headache for the CCP.

    > In China’s official narrative, the country suffered a “century of humiliation” of foreign invasions, starting with the first opium war in 1840 and ending only with Mao’s rise to power in 1949. But the 1644 view—cheekily expressed by some online as “three centuries of humiliation”—argues that subjugation began with the Qing. According to this school, the Qing were anti-Han interlopers and, making matters worse, feckless in repelling foreign forces.

    > Dredging up all this history is uncomfortable for the party. The territorial boundaries claimed by modern China—including Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Taiwan—were brought into the Chinese empire by the Qing, not the Ming. Grievances about the Manchus also cut against the ideal of ethnic harmony advanced by the party. Although much of what forms modern Chinese identity is derived from Han traditions, it is unseemly to talk openly about the dominance of this one ethnic group, which accounts for 90% of the Chinese population. The party looks askance at “Han chauvinism”, believing, with reason, that it may lead to more resentment from non-Han groups.

    [1]: https://www.economist.com/china/2026/07/20/why-criticism-of-...

    by AlexCoventry
  • Tang Dynasty -- isn't that a band which introduced heavy metal to China in the 90's?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_Dynasty_(band)

    They lived the Spinal Tap lifestyle before Spinal Tap.

    by JennyWeston
  • I'm currently reading 'There Is No Antimemetics Division' and this news item reminds me of that. Also, 1984, in which the government actively establishes false narratives as actual history and do it so many times that it's impossible to remember what really happened.
    by raajg
  • "The negationist proposition, in the age in which it is being advanced, cannot therefore be truly denied, since everything, all of us, including those who reject it, have passed over, whether we like it or not, into an age where there is no longer any objective recourse. The proposition, therefore, can be rejected only by a kind of mirror denial. And that is where its victory lies - though in fact it is not its victory, but the victory of real time over the present, over the past, over any form whatsoever of logical articulation of reality." - Jean Baudrillard
    by YackerLose
  • A much better article about the phenomenon: https://open.substack.com/pub/ramble/p/the-tang-dynasty-was-...
    by sincerely
  • The same sort of arguments are playing out in the US, albeit on a shorter timescale. I couldn't say when it started, but it's extremely depressing that the history section in most general bookstores is just a locus for narrative warfare rather than scholarship.

    Of course, this phenomenon is by no means unique to these two countries. I know a Japanese author who has a small but dedicated following for his argument that nuclear weapons don't exist: https://books.google.com/books/about/Death_Object.html?id=Mw...

    by anigbrowl
  • Its a Chinese equivalent of the phantom time theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_conspiracy_theory

    Its just as silly as phantom time and covers almost exactly the same period. The motive is possibly racist which makes it more sinister.

    by graemep
  • There are primary sources. There are archeological sites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianling_Mausoleum

    There are also histories written just after the Tang Dynasty had fallen. It was considered good form for a new dynasty to write a historical review of the previous one, and there are two retrospectives on Tang, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Book_of_Tang

    And there is ironclad evidence from foreign sources. Among others, Japanese histories detail the journeys of emissaries to the Tang Court: https://web.archive.org/web/20260315181529/https://japansoci...

    So the theory is bait, and hard to take seriously.

    But I'll give it credit for hijacking a genuinely interesting scholarly premise: What is taken quite seriously is the notion that China's first dynasty -- the Xia Dynasty -- never existed. It is of rather mythic proportions; later Chinese would speak of Xia the way Romans would speak of Troy. And there is very little evidence to support its existence. The Shang Dynasty is also supported by rather scant evidence -- and is also mythic, though obviously less so than the Xia.

    Worth noting that both the Xia and Shang are exceedingly ancient -- roughly 2000 BC to 1000 BC between them -- unlike the Tang, which fell around 900 AD and is thus middle-of-the-pack by Chinese dynastic standards.

    by A_D_E_P_T

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