Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future
Ian Johnson
Oxford University Press: 2023
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Louisa Lim
The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited
Oxford University Press: 2015
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China’s leadership is fixated on combating ‘historical nihilism’—the act of failing to completely comport to the official, often positive version of history. The end game is to secure an uncontradictable narrative of China’s history that not only makes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) look good, but also convincingly describes the country’s current successes as the indisputable outcomes of continued CCP rule. China’s ups and downs are considered, in almost faith-based fashion, part of the party’s plan. Positive developments are supposed to be the inheritance of each new generation of CCP-governed Chinese people. Negative ones, when acknowledged, are the struggles they have to undergo to earn their birthright.

The state has created a climate of positive memory preservation so powerful that in some cases, it may even exceed its own intended boundaries. For example, the patriotic blogger Wu Wanzheng is suing the writer Mo Yan on the basis that he has violated a 2018 Chinese law meant to “strengthen protections of heroes and martyrs”. Wu’s allegation is that Mo failed to write about the Japanese soldiers who occupied China with sufficiently one-dimensional disdain. He also didn’t make Mao look good enough, therefore endangering the country’s most important hero. The authorities may step in, directly or indirectly, to squelch the case if they deem it an instance of civilian overreach. But it is impossible not to see a connection between the state’s control over history and a nationalistic, perhaps overzealous, individual’s ability to sue based on a historical narrative.

• Tags: China, Ian Johnson, Issue 35, Johanna M. Costigan, Louisa Lim