2014/04/30 by Haiyang Yu · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Art #Asian Studies and History #Blame #China #Chinese history and philosophy #Communism #Economic history #Empire #Frontier #Glory #Government (linguistics) #History #History of China #Language change #Law #Literature #Nationalism #Philosophy #Political economy #Political science #Sociology #Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/10670564.2014.898907
openalex publication_date 2014/04/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
This article examines the emergence of distorted memories of Imperial China. Through popular online sites and media, populist nationalists have obtained exaggerated yet extremely sensational knowledge of Chinese history, which portrays Imperial China as benevolent, strong and more advanced than the western world. Based on these distorted memories, they blame all diplomatic controversies on other countries—western nations for their imperialist exploitation and especially neighboring countries for their ungratefulness to the Chinese empire. Due to the declining appeal of communism, as well as the corruption and isolation of official academia, the Chinese government is under heavy pressure to follow the distorted memory and restore China's historical glory.