笔者注：我在4月中旬写了本文中的大部分内容，最终在回到美国后全文发表。
历史≠记忆
中国是一个历史源远流长的国家，但也是一个集体记忆缺失的国度。至少不太符合我们通常对记忆的定义：一种世代相传的记录和传承方式，可以准确无误地传达历史上发生的种种事件。
在当代中国，为了符合执政党的宣传口径，可能会在历史书中作相应的必要删减或增补。主要是强调长期以来中国是如何被西方列强肆虐凌辱的，而共产党是唯一能够保护中国人民根本利益的政权。
在中国生活的三年半时间里，我得以有机会了解人们是如何看待时政热点的，例如新疆维吾尔族人民的遭遇，美国与华为的冲突，香港的抗议示威活动以及最近的新冠病毒疫情爆发。在每个热点问题的背后，似乎都会发现政府在试图改写该事件的来龙去脉。在本文中，我将以新冠病毒为例，探讨政府是如何出于维稳需要而改写新冠病毒疫情宣传口径的。
中国集体记忆丧失的背景
中国人民往往为自己的悠久历史感到自豪，这也是理所应当的。许多流传至今的传统节日都可以追溯到数千年前，例如端午节是为了纪念公元前278年投江自尽的政治家诗人屈原。但是，中国对历史的热爱也含有些许讽刺意味，因为即使最基本的事实也往往有可能出错。例如每次在商务宴会上，跟你聊天的中国同伴总是会想办法提到中国上下5000年的历史！ （实际上，中国的历史更接近4000年）。
人们常说，历史是由胜者写就的。中国经历了无数朝代，可以说每个朝代都重写了以前的历史。在当下这个朝代的中国共产党（CPC）作为执政党也不例外。共产党对1949年执政之前的100年历史进行了不少删改，其中数不清的历史事实因而石沉大海。
例如，在1900年侵略中国的八国联军包括美国，日本，大英帝国，意大利，奥匈帝国，俄罗斯，法国和德国。在我认识的几乎每个中国人的心中，这次侵略给整个国家带来了巨大创伤，是中国屈辱世纪中尤其突出的一页。但是中国课堂上没有提到的是，八国联军是对当时极端民族主义组织义和团的回击。从1899年开始，义和团对中国的基督教传教士和基督教徒进行了大规模谋杀，试图通过这种极端手段来清除中国国内的外国影响。中国的教科书里还提到美国参与了八国联军，以证明美国一直在阻止中国的崛起。如果你请任何一位受过国内大学教育的中国人谈谈对八国联军的了解，他们多半会告诉你美国是当时八国联军的主导。但实际上，在八国联军的50,000人中仅有3,000名美国士兵。而且，美国后来把中国签署《义和团协议》后支付的大部分战争赔款都退还了。
举上述这个例子绝不是为这些国家在19世纪对中国进行的殖民行为辩解。在那期间，中国大片领土被西方列强割据和控制，是真实的历史事实。同样，这个例子也不是在为义和团战败后西方列强的掠夺行为辩解。相反，我是想分享自己与中国朋友们谈论到这个话题时的经历。他们的课堂上似乎没有讨论过义和团的暴力行为，以及义和团反外国和反基督教的性质。课堂上也没有提及当时有约30,000名中国基督徒被义和团杀害的历史事实。换句话说，围绕历史事件的这些细节并没包含在中国的历史课程里。人们不是故意要忘记这些事情，他们只是没有机会去了解。
再以朝鲜战争为例，朝鲜战争始于1950年6月25日朝鲜人民军入侵大韩民国（韩国）。但直到2010年，中国的官方口径都还坚持说是美国侵略才造成了这场战争。实际上，是由苏联和中国支持的朝鲜率先对韩国进行了入侵，之后美国才作出的反应。
在中国现行版本的第二次世界大战中，日本是由共产党主导击败的。这段修正过的历史几乎忽略了美国支持的国民党的作用。国民党在与日本帝国主义战斗遭受重大伤亡之后，进而被中共战败赶出了中国大陆。同样，中国现行版本也弱化了最终导致日本在二战中宣布投降的那两枚原子弹。在中国期间，我遇到的人里只有两个听说过飞虎队。这群美国飞行员自愿在1941年至1942年帮助中国与日本作战，却在中国的集体记忆里几乎销声匿迹。这些内容从中国的官方历史中弱化或者删除，多半是因为不符合政府的官方宣传口径：1）西方列强一直在找机会侵略中国； 2）中国共产党是唯一能保护中国人民利益不受侵害的政权。
在中国教育体制下，大多数中国民众认为1949年合并新疆（在这之前基本上新疆在独立运转）是帮助当地人摆脱贪婪的地主恶霸，获得和平解放。很少有中国人知道这里的解放涉及强迫维吾尔族同胞放弃伊斯兰宗教信仰，甚至强迫他们养猪和吃猪肉。在中国期间，我只遇到一个知道这些情况的人。令我惊讶的是，他把这些事件解释为中国共产党对维吾尔族人的慷慨大方：我们是在教导一群未开化的人如何饲养家畜并且用来卖掉赚钱。这有什么问题吗？
近代史上的记忆丧失
现今正在发生的事件也陆续在被重写，用来进一步说明中国是西方不公正的受害者。
就拿美国对中国电信巨头华为的制裁来说吧。一方面华为宣称自己是完全独立于政府的，另一方面又强势表示中国政府将替它对美国采取报复行动。中国网友将这一切理解为美国在残酷地试图阻止中国崛起。但是在中国国内，网友看不到任何国外媒体对华为盗窃知识产权证据确凿的新闻报道。当华为前首席财务官孟晚舟于2018年底被捕时，中国国内媒体并没提到她和华为是如何规避美国对伊朗的制裁的。在中国网友心里，她只是美国对华为发动政治制裁的受害者。
对于正在新疆维吾尔族同胞身上发生的人权迫害行为，西方世界提出强烈抗议，中国政府却说这是美国在利用人权作为抹黑中国形象的政治工具。中国还有不少爱国主义者认为，香港的动荡是由于美国干预造成的。实际上，香港的抗议示威活动是起源于2019年港府提出的逃犯引渡法案。
由于政府坚持不懈的舆论宣传，大多数人似乎只保留下了官方记忆，这些记忆就是：西方大国一直在想方设法阻止中国崛起。不论是历史书籍和新闻报道，还是餐桌谈话或课堂辩论，如果不符合这个官方记忆的口径，多半会被改写或删除。因此，那些改写和删改的内容从未留在中国民众的记忆中。
新冠病毒（Covid-19）疫情期间记忆丧失的时间轴
在中国期间亲历新冠病毒疫情的过程中，我观察到了这种记忆的丧失。回溯到2019年12月30日，一位名叫李文亮的医生提醒他的亲友，SARS病毒似乎重新出现了，并开始在他所在的医院传播。随后，他被当地警察带走讯问，并被迫签署训诫书，承认他散布谣言的行为是错误的（毕竟后来事实证明，该病毒的名称不叫SARS病毒）。接下来的数周内这个新型病毒继续肆意传播，直到各大医院人满为患，情况失去控制。2020年1月23日，武汉市政府宣布封城。
从1月下旬到2月中旬之间，中国国内的舆论共识是该病毒始于武汉，并从那里向外扩散。但是随着事态不断恶化，政府逐渐意识到，该病毒对中国整体经济造成重创，并夺走了至少3000条生命（可能实际数量会更多），任由事态继续发展可能会对其执政稳定性造成重大打击。
于是，历史开始慢慢被改写：
2月6日，公民记者陈秋实宣告失踪。在此之前，他深入武汉疫区，并在YouTube上发布视频，包括武汉疫情的严峻局势和对政府控制不力的批评。从中国政府的立场来看，如果要控制公众对疫情的了解，就不能允许像陈这样的记者对武汉的真实情况进行未经审查的报道。 同样在2月6号，李文亮医生被他试图提醒民众的新冠病毒感染住院数周后最终宣告不治。他的死亡时间从2月6日下午10:00分左右更改为官宣的2月7日凌晨2:58分。有一些朋友推测这次更改有两个原因。首先，政府可以凸显自己的尽责，表示花了长达五个小时尽了一切努力来救治李医生。其次，因为当时广大民众为他的离世感到出离愤怒。因此，政府选择在大多数人睡着后的午夜时段宣布李医生去世，这样可以减少人们因愤怒而上街游行示威的可能性。 2月8日，国内社交媒体上流传着一张上海年轻女子在街头举着言论自由标语的照片。当时我已经在中国呆了三年之久，从来没有看过或听过哪个人敢于公开提出这种诉求。然而几天内，这张图片就从中国互联网上消失了。
2月21日，日本《朝日新闻》（Asahi News）的一篇报道中指出，美国的14,000例流感死亡病例中有一部分可能是新冠病毒（Covid-19）感染。这篇报道被用来在中国国内广泛传播，以引发人们对美国作为新冠病毒潜在来源的怀疑。 2月22日，中国科学院西双版纳热带植物园在其官网刊文称，新冠病毒并非起源于武汉的华南海鲜市场。该研究成果可能是真实的，不过该文章后来被用来广泛传播，作为病毒并非源于中国的证明。 2月27日，传染病学专家钟南山院士通过新闻发布会向全国民众通报，新冠病毒可能并非起源于中国。钟南山院士因在2003年SARS疫情期间担任关键角色，受到中国民众的广泛信任和尊重。 2月28日，中国国内社交媒体上开始疯传一个CNN新闻报道的错误翻译截屏。错误翻译写的是，美国疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）承认该病毒起源于美国。由于中国有好几亿人不太懂英语，这种错误翻译达到的传播效果往往惊人。
英文标题：美国疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）确认了美国的第一起来源不明的新冠病毒感染，表明美国正在发生新冠病毒的社区传播。中文错误翻译：美国疾病预防控制中心承认第一个新冠病毒起源于美国。
2月29日，张文宏医生在一次采访中说，新冠病毒很可能起源于武汉。之前经常接受新闻采访的他在这之后就几乎不再出现在电视节目中了。张文宏医生在疫情爆发初期属于一颗冉冉升起的新星，以其真实诚恳的态度广受公众尊重。当时他公开提倡共产党员冲到第一线替换身心俱疲的医护人员，赢得了民众的称赞。 3月1日，中国共产党制定的新网络安全法出台，赋予政府更多权力在社交媒体平台上管控关于新冠病毒的言论。根据新规，只有政府授权的机构和个人才能在指定社交媒体平台上提到新冠病毒。 在那之后，虽然除官方口径之外的任何关于病毒的言论都销声匿迹了，但很多关于病毒的阴谋论却似乎受到扶持一般悄然兴起。
上面的这个例子只展示了中国互联网言论管控的冰山一角，不过至少能帮你对舆论操控的具体策略有个大致了解。例如在国内流行的视频分享平台Bilibili上，这个有51个粉丝的用户总共上传过13个视频，其中有12个平均观看次数都不到200次。然而，他在3月1日发布的一个视频却超过24万5千次观看量。该视频是一个简短的中文解说片段，说有意大利专家确定新冠病毒来自美国。考虑到这个账号粉丝极少，以及该账号所有的其他视频观看次数都极少，可以毫不夸张地说，如果没有宣传部门的推手，这条视频几乎不可能有如此高的观看次数。可能有点类似YouTube将美国政府希望人们看到的特定内容推送到首页一样。在我向Bilibili的审查部门投诉之后，该视频被删除了。
3月3日，我当时准备在Bilibili上发个视频，内容是讨论美国在新冠病毒爆发初期的应对措施。在Bilibili上发布的所有视频都需要事先经过平台的人工审核。一开始我被告知该视频的内容过于负面，无法发布。随后我把视频修改的更正面了一些，然而还是再次被审核部门拒绝。通过电话沟通，我被告知现在政府不再允许个人在网上讨论关于冠状病毒的任何信息。当然不是说所有关于冠状病毒的讨论都从Bilibili上消失了，而是只有经有关部门批准的机构和个人才能发布内容。
3月11日，中国外交官们开始在推特上发起一种阴谋论，说是美军将新冠病毒带到了武汉（尽管有中国政府其他部门已经官宣否认了这种阴谋论）。由于Twitter在中国被禁，所以仅有只言片语被传播回了防火墙内。中国网民只能根据少量虚假和不可靠的信息得出结论。民众总体上还是倾向于支持政府的官方舆论版本。
3月16日，在白宫官方网站（Whitehouse.gov）上有人发起了一份请愿，谴责中国病毒一词，并提到尤其在新冠病毒（COVID-19）来源尚未得出科学定论时，将病毒归咎于中国是不可接受的。我绝对认同不应该把新冠病毒造成的后果归咎于中国和中国人民。但作为执政政府，中国共产党让病毒从2019年12月30日至2020年1月23日肆意传播不加有效控制，应该负相应责任。如果当时中国政府及时作为，新冠病毒在全球范围的传播将得到大幅减少。
3月20日，中国最有影响力的官方媒体中央电视台（CCTV）采访了一位中国专家，介绍了美国在抗击病毒方面的进展。该中国专家指出，美国开发疫苗的速度如此之快，明显表明美国科学家早在武汉疫情爆发前就掌握了这种病毒的基因序列。换句话说，该病毒很可能是美国用来攻击中国的生化武器。
3月21日，中国官方外宣媒体《环球时报》等杂志开始指出2019年11月份在意大利存在新冠病毒案例的可能性。通过这种让病毒来源模糊不清的宣传策略，给中文新闻读者造成的印象就是似乎根本不可能找到病毒的起源。
3月22日，中国驻美大使崔天凯否认了3月11日前后出现的阴谋论。但是，他坚持把新冠病毒起源描述为一个尚未证实的问题，并指出媒体和外交官对其起源的推测是非常有害的。事实是，目前除中国以外，没有权威科学家认为新冠病毒起源于中国以外的其他地区（直到7月中旬本文发表之际，这种判断仍然是主流看法）。
3月28日前后，中国中央电视台错误翻译了欧美研究报告，并按照错误翻译进行了广泛报道，称新冠病毒不是在武汉开始的。
图1和图2：《自然医学》刊发的一篇文章里，杜兰大学医学院的罗伯特加里（Robert Garry）医生指出，武汉的华南海鲜市场可能不是新冠病毒的来源。在中国国内，这被错误翻译为：美国承认该病毒并非来自武汉。 图3：来自中国的一个Twitter用户在传播这个错误翻译。
上面列出的中国国内的官方舆论宣传策略不一而足，远未详尽。不过这些例子还是很有代表性，结合说明了中国政府的宣传部门为了帮助民众创造集体记忆，是如何有选择性地删改和创造信息的。
失忆后的世界
在意料之中的是，这场舆论宣传闪电战中，中国政府使用了一直以来非常有效的话术：中国属于受害者，新冠病毒是由美国或意大利带到中国的。通过差不多六个星期的密集舆论宣传，4月初我与上海的友邻聊天时就发现，大多数人都已经相信该病毒起源于美国。在关于新冠病毒起源的争论过程中，我还失去了一个曾经的好朋友。
在社交媒体上，那些呼吁言论自由的内容在2月上旬就骤然停止了。李文亮医生的相关文章被审查删除。就好像人们已经完全忘记了疫情爆发初期的那些恐惧和愤怒。
图1：有关李文亮医生去世的两篇纪念文章随后遭到审查删除（图2）。图3：微信朋友圈的一篇帖子，引用了约翰斯图亚特米尔（John Stuart Mill）关于言论自由重要性的名言：所有禁言的国家必定犯错。
当然，除了将特定宣传内容推送给读者之外，相关部门还可以删除不利和敏感内容。这样的操作同时也在现实世界中发生着。
我的一个上海邻居在院子里的树上挂了一副李文亮的画像。短短几天之后肖像就被摘下了。
图1：李文亮的肖像挂在邻居的树上（2020年3月2日）。图2：肖像已被摘下（2020年3月5日）。
在中国，民众何时用何种方式来祭奠李文亮医生属于一件政治事务，而不是个人事务。因此，你对悲伤的表达也在政府的控制之下。
我家附近一副类似的艺术作品也在短暂出现后消失了。
作品中的警察戴着口罩，象征着新冠病毒疫情爆发初期的控制。
与中国相似，美国的社交媒体在新闻宣传中也起着重要作用。但是区别在于，美国的政府和官员无法控制民众获取的信息，也不能控制和删改那些政府不想看到的内容。
在中国也有许多网友对《人民日报》和中国中央电视台（CCTV）等官方媒体失去了信任。他们转而通过微博（类似推特）和微信公众号（类似Medium或Substack）来阅读新闻信息和时事分析。之前和我陷入争论的那位朋友就是在微信上读到过一篇文章。那篇文章暗示说，由于武汉病毒研究所是由美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）部分资助的，因此美国肯定知道新冠病毒，并从实验室把该病毒泄漏了出去。
可能这么说还缺乏客观证明，不过我认为，当中国民众感觉无法从官方新闻机构获得真实信息时，他们会更倾向于相信通过非官方渠道发布的那些类似阴谋论的消息。如本文所述，这些非官方渠道也可能是由政府相关部门操纵的。无论中国读者从哪个来源获取新闻，是来自官方媒体还是社交自媒体，政府都对你所看到的内容拥有最终决定权。
未来的集体记忆缺失
从2019年12月下旬李文亮医生向亲友发出疫情警告的那一天到今天，真实的历史只有一个版本。但是综上所述，人们对这段历史的相关记忆已经被系统地修改或删除。那么从现在起的五年、十年或十五年后，小学生们又将如何了解到新冠病毒的起源呢？我预感到时候的课堂上不会提到野生动物买卖和卫生条件差导致疫情爆发的这种内容（类似于2003年SARS病毒的传播原因）。
举个韩国的例子作为对比，2014年的韩国世越号渡轮沉没事件造成多达250名中学生无辜丧生。在事件发生五年后，首尔市政府在光化门广场为死者建造了新的纪念设施。为什么要纪念？是为了保留这份公众记忆。确保不会忘记过去的错误，避免未来再有类似悲剧发生。
随着中国政府在病毒起源上编织的谎言越来越多，真相就越来越不可能浮出水面。否则最终得知真相的民众在恍然大悟之际，不免会问 如果这是假的，那还有哪些是假的？ 这是执政党不能也不敢让中国人民提出的问题。
今天的中国人民对鸦片战争、八国联军以及南京大屠杀的记忆历历在目，仿佛自己亲历了这些历史事件。但是与其相比，有许多人不记得或者不知道距离现在更近的天安门事件。大多数人也不太了解1987年的大兴安岭火灾，由于当时灭火过程不透明，并存在严重的官僚作风，最终导致250万英亩土地受到火灾损害，将近5万人无家可归。也几乎没有人记得1994年在新疆克拉玛依市发生的大火，造成近300名青少年葬身火海。如果现场的官员没有让孩子们坐好等领导先走，这些孩子可能还有逃生的机会。
随着时间的流逝，忘记历史长河中的事件是难以避免的。但是在开放的民主国家，人们会对那些过去有争议的事件进行研究分析，以史为鉴。例如在美国，我们一直会讨论为结束二战而在日本投下原子弹的道德争议，也会辩论美国当时是否应该涉足越南战争。记得2006年我在读高中，当时阿富汗战争爆发已经五年了。我们的英语文学老师用整堂课来讨论阿富汗战争的错误性。这些公开的讨论和辩论为大家创造了记忆，记录下那些过去和现在的道德和人文争议。对过去进行追忆和反思，可以指导我们在将来做出更好的决断。
中国政府似乎不太会这样做，而且在可预见的未来似乎也不太可能。我担心那些在未来即将发生的真实记忆，或许也会像这次新冠病毒疫情中的一些记忆一样，在昙花一现后被迫修改或消失
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English Version
Note: I wrote the majority of this piece in mid-April and chose to hold off publishing until I returned to America.
History ≠ memory
China is a nation with a long history but it is also a nation with no memory. At least not in the way we tend to define memory, a device for recording and passing down across generations an accurate representation of how past events unfolded.
In modern day China, whole chapters may be deleted or inserted into the book of history in order to fit the Communist Party’s desired narrative, namely that China has long been victimized by cruel Western powers and the Party is the only entity capable of protecting China’s interests.
Living in China for three and a half years, I had the opportunity to understand how people view hot-button issues like the treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, America’s conflict with Huawei, the protests in Hong Kong, and most recently the coronavirus outbreak. Behind each issue, there is an active attempt to rewrite the history of how events unfolded.
In this piece, I explore how the narrative around the coronavirus was re-written in real time to strengthen the Party’s rule.
Background on collective memory loss in China
Chinese people are proud of their history, and rightly so. Many of today’s traditions hearken back to people or events from thousands of years ago — for example, the annual Dragon Boat Festival is thought to celebrate Qu Yuan, a statesman-poet who died in 278 BC. However, there exists a certain irony in China’s affinity for history in that even the most basic facts are often remembered incorrectly. In every business dinner, your conversation partner will almost invariably find an opportunity to interject with something about “5000 years of Chinese history!” (in reality it is closer to 4000 years).
History is, as they say, written by the victors. China has passed through myriad dynasties, each of which rewrites the history of times prior. The current dynasty, the Community Party of China (CPC), is no exception. The CPC has engaged in revisions of the 100 years prior to its ascent in 1949 with a seemingly unending supply of whiteout.
Take, for example, the 1900 occupation of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance, comprising the United States, Japan, the British Empire, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, France, and Germany. The pain of this occupation, a particularly prominent trauma in China’s “Century of Humiliation,” is seared into the mind of almost every Chinese person I know. What is left out of classroom lectures is that the occupying armies invaded in response to the hyper-nationalistic Boxer Rebellion which began murdering Christian missionaries and Chinese Christians in 1899. It was a heavy-handed and violent effort to purge China of foreign influence. America’s participation in the incursion is used as evidence that the US has always been bent on stemming China’s rise. If you were to speak with a typical college-educated Chinese person about their understanding of the Eight-Nation Alliance, you would think America was the prime aggressor. In reality, the US only contributed 3,000 of the 50,000 troops and returned most of the war reparations that China was forced to pay after signing the Boxer Protocol.
Post-publication note: the purpose of the above example was not by any means to excuse the participating countries for their colonization of China during 1800’s, under which large swaths of China’s territory were carved up and controlled by Western powers. Nor is it to excuse the pillaging that followed the defeat of the Boxers. Rather, I wanted to relay my experience of talking to people about this topic, who had generally not discussed the violent, anti-foreign, and anti-Christian nature of the Boxer uprising in their classrooms. Nor did they discuss the fact that some 30,000 Chinese Christians were killed by the Boxers during the uprising. In other words, the nuance that typically surrounds historical events was not part of the standard curriculum. People didn’t willfully forget that these things happened — rather, they just didn’t learn about them in the first place, through no choice of their own.
Take, for another example, the Korean war, which started when the North Korean People’s Army invaded the Republic of Korea (South Korea) on June 25th, 1950. Until 2010, China’s official position asserted that American aggression caused the war. In reality, America acted in response to the invasion of South Korea by its Soviet- and Chinese-backed neighbor to the north.
In the Chinese version of World War II, Japan was defeated solely at the hands of the Communist Party. This revisionist history completely ignores the role of the US-backed KMT, which, after sustaining heavy casualties fighting the Imperial Japanese Army, was driven out of Mainland China by the CPC. It also ignores the two atomic bombs which led to Japan’s ultimate surrender. In my time in China, I only met two people who knew of the Flying Tigers, a group of American pilots who volunteered to help China fight Japan in 1941 to 1942. These events have been removed from the official history because they don’t further the narrative that 1) Western powers have always been out to get China and 2) the CPC is the sole guardian of the Chinese people.
As a result of their education, most people view the 1949 annexation of Xinjiang, which was previously operating essentially as an independent country, as an act of liberation from greedy landlords. Very few Han Chinese know that this “liberation” involved forcing Uighur Muslims to renounce their religion, raise pigs, and eat pork. In my time in China, I only met one person who knew this. To my surprise, he interpreted these events as evidence of the CPC’s generosity towards the Uighurs: “We were teaching an uncivilized group of people how to raise a valuable animal they could sell and earn money. What's wrong with that?”
Memory loss in recent history
Events from the present day are also rewritten to further the narrative that China is a victim of Western injustice.
America’s aggressive stance against Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, which on the one hand claims to be entirely independent from the Chinese government but on the other hand confidently says that Beijing will retaliate on its behalf in the face of continued American pressure, is taken by Chinese citizens as evidence that America is cruelly bent on stemming China’s rise. However, well-documented cases of Huawei’s IP theft go unreported in China. When Huawei’s former CFO, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in late 2018, her complicity in helping Huawei skirt American sanctions on Iran were not discussed in Chinese media. She was simply a victim of America’s politically-driven war against Huawei.
The Western world’s outcry against atrocities committed in Xinjiang are seen as America using human rights as a “political tool to smear China’s image.” The more nationalistic voices in China claim that the unrest in Hong Kong, which in reality are a result of an ill-conceived extradition bill introduced in 2019, are due to US meddling.
As a result of the constant propaganda barrage, most people seem to retain only those memories which further a narrative that Western powers act, and always have acted, primarily to prevent China’s rise. Events that fail to drive this narrative are reinterpreted or expunged from both history books and present-day reporting, and thereby from dinner table conversation or classroom debate. Thus, the memories of these events never take shape in China’s national conscience.
A timeline of memory loss during the Covid-19 epidemic
I saw this “expunging of memory” happening as I watched the coronavirus disaster unfold. On December 30th, a doctor named Li Wenliang warned his colleagues that SARS had returned and was making its way through his hospital. He was subsequently brought in for questioning by local police and forced to sign a letter acknowledging that he was wrong to spread rumors (after all, the disease turned out to be something other than SARS). The virus spread unchecked for weeks until hospitals began filling up and the situation became untenable. On January 23rd, the Wuhan government announced it was shutting the city down.
For a short time between late January and mid February, the consensus within China seemed to be that the virus started in Wuhan and expanded from there. However, at some point the CPC realized that their association with a virus that had tanked the Chinese economy and taken at least 3,000 lives (though likely many more) would strike a critical blow to their legitimacy.
And so they began rewriting history:
On February 6th, citizen journalist Chen Qiushi disappeared after posting videos to YouTube that both criticized the CPC and showed how dire the situation was in Wuhan. The CPC could not allow people like Chen to give an unfiltered view of what was happening in Wuhan if they were to successfully control public perceptions of the outbreak.
On the same day, Li Wenliang succumbed to the virus he tried to warn people about. His time of death was altered from approximately 10:00 PM on February 6th to 2:58 AM on February 7th. My friends speculated this alteration was made for two reasons. First, it allowed the government to say that they spent five hours making every effort resuscitate him. Second, by waiting until most people were asleep to declare Li dead, they reduced the chance of people taking to the streets in anger. People were furious about his death.
On February 8th, a picture of a young woman in Shanghai holding a sign demanding freedom of speech circulated on social media. At this point, I had been in China for three years and had not once seen or heard a single person publicly make this demand. Within days, this image disappeared from the Chinese internet.
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A February 21st report from Japan’s Asahi News stating that some of America’s 14,000 flu deaths may have actually been Covid-19 was used within China to cast suspicion on America as a potential source of the virus.
On February 22nd, a Chinese Academy of Sciences research institute in Yunnan said that the virus didn’t originate at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. Although this conclusion may be true, it was used to push a narrative that the virus didn’t originate in China altogether.
On February 27th, infectious disease expert Dr. Zhong Nanshan went on TV to tell the country that the virus may not have originated in China. Dr. Zhong is well respected and trusted because of the role he played in the 2003 SARS outbreak.
On February 28th, a false translation of a CNN news clip was shared ad-nauseam on social media. The translation indicated that the American CDC admitted the virus originated in the US. Because there are hundreds of millions of people in China who do not speak English well, these types of false translations are surprisingly effective.
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English caption: CDC confirms first case of “unknown origin” in the US, indicating community transmission is occurring in the US. Chinese translation: The American CDC admits that the first case of the novel coronavirus originated in America.
On February 29th, Dr. Zhang Wenhong stated during an interview that the virus most likely originated in Wuhan. After this, he all but disappeared from his increasingly regular television appearances. Dr. Zhang was a rising star in the early days of the outbreak, respected for his no-nonsense attitude. He won people’s hearts by publicly demanding that members of the CPC deploy to the front lines to relieve overworked nurses and doctors.
On March 1st, the CPC enacted a new internet security law giving them broader authority to silence discussion about the virus on social media platforms. Under the new rules, only people that had the government’s blessing were allowed to discuss the virus on certain social media platforms.
Next, while any expression of doubt over the official narrative was muted, they allowed and encouraged conspiracy theories to flourish.
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This example barely scratches the surface of the ways in which the Chinese internet is manipulated, but at least gives you an idea of the tactics employed. On the popular video streaming platform Bilibili, a user with 51 followers had uploaded a total of 13 videos, 12 of which had an average of less than 200 views. One particular video, released on March 1st, had over 245,000 views. It was short clip of a Chinese-language narration explaining that Italian experts had determined the virus came from America. Given the small number of followers and low view count for the other videos, it is an understatement to say that such viewership is virtually impossible without a rankings boost from the country’s propaganda organs. It would be like YouTube promoting to its front page specific content that the US Government wanted people to see. This video was deleted after I complained to Bilibili’s censorship department.
On March 3rd, I tried to publish a video on Bilibili discussing America’s response to the virus. I was at first told that the content of the video was too negative and therefore could not be published. I revised the video, giving it a more positive spin. After the video was rejected a second time, I called the censorship department and was told that they are no longer allowing people to discuss the coronavirus outbreak. This is not to say that all coronavirus content disappeared from Bilibili; rather, only approved voices got to post such content.
On March 11th, Chinese officials and diplomats began pushing a conspiracy on Twitter that the US military brought the coronavirus to Wuhan (despite the fact that another branch of the Chinese government had already debunked this conspiracy theory). Because Twitter is banned in China, only bits and pieces trickle back behind the Great Firewall. Chinese netizens are forced to draw conclusions based on both false and spotty information. Generally speaking, they tend to side with their government’s version of the narrative.
On March 16th, a petition was started on Whitehouse.gov that condemns the term “Chinese virus” and says it is unacceptable to blame China “especially under the circumstances where the origin of COVID-19 is not scientifically definite yet.” While I agree that it is wrong to blame China and Chinese people for the virus, it is necessary to hold the CPC responsible for allowing it to spread unchecked from December 30th, 2019 until January 23rd, 2020. If the CPC had acted earlier, the global spread of Covid would have been dramatically reduced.
On March 20th, China Central TV (CCTV), the most influential broadcaster in the nation, interviewed an expert about America’s progress fighting the virus. The expert stated that America’s speed in developing a vaccine was an obvious indicator that American scientists had the genetic sequence of the virus in their hands well before the Wuhan outbreak. In other words, the virus is likely a US bioweapon that was used to attack China.
On March 21st, Global Times and others begin to point to the possibility of cases existing in Italy in November. This tactic of muddying the waters about the origin of the virus gives consumers of Chinese news the impression that it is simply impossible to know where it originated.
On March 22nd, the Chinese Ambassador to the US disowned the conspiracy theory propagated on March 11th. However, he continued to paint the question of where Covid-19 started as something unknowable, stating it is “very harmful” for journalists and diplomats to speculate about its origins. At this point in time, there were no serious scientists outside of China who thought the virus originated anywhere but China (and so it remains today, in mid-July, at the time of publishing).
Around March 28th, CCTV misquoted Western researchers and broadcasted false translations claiming that the virus did not start in Wuhan.
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Images 1 & 2: An article in Nature Medicine, in which Dr. Robert Garry of the Tulane University School of Medicine states that the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was likely not the origin of the virus. Within China, this was portrayed as: “America admits that the virus did not come from Wuhan.” Image 3: A Twitter user in China parroting this talking point.
The propaganda initiatives detailed above do not represent an exhaustive list. Nonetheless, taken together they illustrate what the CPC’s propaganda department does to manufacture desirable memories and delete undesirable ones.
The post-amnesia world
Unsurprisingly, throughout this propaganda blitz, the government made use of the age-old narrative: China is a victim, the virus was brought here by the US or by Italy. By early April, after six weeks of aggressive propaganda, my impression from talking with friends and neighbors in Shanghai was that most people believed the virus originated in America. I lost a friend after getting in an argument about where Covid-19 started.
The social media posts calling for freedom of speech that characterized the early part of February had all but stopped. Articles written about Li Wenliang were censored. It was as if people had completely forgotten about the fear and anger they felt in the early days of the outbreak.
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Image 1: Two articles about the tragic death of Li Wenliang which were subsequently censored (Image 2). Image 3: A post from a WeChat friend with a quote attributed to John Stuart Mill on the importance of freedom of speech: “All countries that censor speech will end up making mistakes.”
Of course, in addition to placing selected content in front of you in order to reinforce a narrative, the censors remove undesirable content as well. This happens in the physical world, too.
A neighbor of mine in Shanghai had a Li Wenliang portrait hanging on the tree in his yard. Within days, the portrait had been removed.
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Image 1: A portrait of Li Wenliang hanging on a neighbor’s tree (March 2nd, 2020). Image 2: The portrait has been removed (March 5th, 2020).
In China, how and when you grieve about Li Wenliang’s death is a political matter, not a personal one, and thus your expression of grief is subject to government control.
Another piece of protest art similarly disappeared from my neighborhood.
The police are depicted wearing face masks, evoking the early days of virus control.
Similar to America, social media in China plays an important role in shaping narratives. The difference is that in the US, government officials cannot control what you see or what is off limits.
Many people have become distrustful of state media outlets like People’s Daily and CCTV. They often turn to Weibo (think Twitter) and WeChat Public Accounts (think Medium or Substack) for news and analysis of current events. The friend I mentioned getting in an argument with above had read posts on WeChat suggesting that because the Wuhan Institute of Virology was partially funded by the NIH, America must have known about the virus and played a role in leaking it from the lab.
I know this is anecdotal and does not prove anything. Nonetheless, my intuition is that when people are starved for credible information from their country’s journalistic institutions, they will have a lower threshold for believing conspiracy-esque news delivered through other channels. As discussed above, these channels can also be manipulated by government officials. No matter which sources you get your news from, state media, independent media, or social media, the state is the ultimate arbiter of what content you see.
Memory loss of things yet to happen
There is only one true history of what happened between late December 2019, when Li Wenliang warned his colleagues about the virus, and today. But, as discussed above, the things which evoke memories of this history have been systematically altered or dismantled. In five, ten, or fifteen years from now, what will school kids learn about the origin of the virus? I would posit that they will not learn a story about how wild animal trade and poor sanitation caused the outbreak (similar to what happened in with SARS in 2003).
To give a contrasting example, in Korea, where 250 students needlessly died when the Sewol ferry sank in 2014, five years after the incident the Seoul city government opened a new memorial to the deceased. The aim? To preserve memories. To ensure that past failures are not forgotten and thus not repeated.
When you are as far down the rabbit hole with a lie as the CPC is on Covid-19’s origin, there is no hope of backtracking towards truth. Doing so would cause too much doubt and scrutiny by the people they set out to deceive. “If that was all fake, what else is?” This is a question the Party cannot afford to have Chinese people asking.
Chinese people alive today remember the Opium Wars and the occupation by the Eight Nation Army and the Rape of Nanjing as if these events happened to them personally. But many people in China do not remember Tiananmen. Most people do not remember that the Daxing’anling fire of 1987, which burned over 2,500,000 acres and left 50,000 people homeless, could have been mitigated were it not for a governance structure that prioritized meetings and bureaucracy over action and transparency. Virtually no one remembers the 1994 fire in the Xinjiang city of Karamay that killed nearly 300 schoolchildren, whose deaths could have been avoided if the officials at the scene had not ordered the children to stay in their seats while they themselves fled.
Losing memories to history is as inevitable as the passage of time. But in open democracies we study the controversial events of our past. We debate whether or not it was moral to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. We debate whether or not America should have participated in the Vietnam war. In 2006 when I was a senior in high school, five years into the war in Afghanistan, my English Literature teacher spent a full class period discussing what a failure the war had been. These discussions and debates create memories for us — memories of moral failures, past and present. These memories of the past can guide us towards better decisions in the future.
As a country, China does not have this, and it does not seem to be on the horizon. I fear that the memories of things yet to happen will, like the experience of the Covid-19 outbreak, be lost soon after they’re formed.
