Hong Kong —
Something strange is happening on the Internet in China. One small and vocal corner claims that the country’s most famous historical dynasty never existed.
That was the Tang Dynasty, which ruled China from 618 to 907 AD. This era saw great territorial expansion, international trade flourished, and an advanced culture that was the envy of far beyond its borders. All children learn about Tang at school. Historical dramas inspired by palace intrigues have become a staple of state television.
Claiming that the 300-year dynasty was actually a myth is like saying the American Civil War never happened, or telling the British that Magna Carta is fiction. But in recent months, the virus has spread among China’s online population, causing headaches for the ruling Communist Party, which is obsessed with controlling how people talk about its 5,000-year history of conflict and controversy.
It all seems to have started in May when an influential historical figure named Qiao Yu released a video of mysterious astrological data to “prove” that the Tang Dynasty never existed.
This outlandish claim has since spread far and wide. Then reports surfaced that people were calling the tourism bureau in Xi’an, the capital of the ancient Tang Dynasty, demanding it be shut down because the dynasty itself turned out to be a hoax.
The hashtag “The Tang Dynasty Does Not Exist” has now been viewed tens of millions of times on China’s X-style Weibo.
It is difficult to pinpoint the motives behind misinformation and its spread. The Tang Dynasty has been criticized in the past by Chinese nationalists because its founding emperor was not from the Han ethnic group, which makes up the majority of China’s population. The basis of Qiao Yu’s claim is that the successor Song dynasty actually began much earlier than traditionally accepted, and thus canceled out the Tang. The Song Dynasty was the origin of the Han people.
“This is basically nonsense,” said William Kirby, a professor of Chinese studies at Harvard University, adding that there are historical facts and “the Tang dynasty is definitely one of them.”
“It was much more than just a Chinese dynasty. It was also an Inner Asian dynasty,” he said.
After the fallacy spread on social media, China’s powerful and tightly controlled state media intervened in the controversy.
Nanjing Daily reported last month that many parents felt that their children were confused about historical facts due to misinformation.
Three days later, Shanghai government media outlet The Paper sounded even more harsh. “Only when rational inquiry becomes the basis of national life will historical nihilism truly lose the conditions that make it thrive,” the magazine said in its commentary.
“Historical nihilism” is a term coined by the ruling Communist Party to refer to discussions and research that challenge interpretations of China’s long history. The party itself is a relative newcomer to the story, coming to power in 1949 after a decades-long civil war that tore the country apart.
By mid-August, the Tang controversy had attracted the attention of party representatives. In an editorial, the People’s Daily called this claim “ridiculous” and warned, “Once young people begin to doubt our country’s history, our cultural self-confidence will be like water without a source or a tree without roots, and Chinese-style modernization will lose its deep historical perspective.”
In recent years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has tightened his party’s control over history and called for tougher penalties for those who dare to challenge the official narrative.
Mr. Xi himself has publicly evoked the past glories of the Tang Dynasty. In 2023, he hosted leaders of several Central Asian countries in Xi’an, the ancient capital of the Tang Dynasty and the terminus of the Silk Road, where goods and ideas once flowed between China and Europe.
The ceremony featured dancers and performers dressed in Tang-style costumes, participants noted, recalling the Tang past when foreign envoys came to pay their respects to the imperial court.
For millennia, the Chinese have looked back and reimagined the past as a creative way to criticize or approach the present.
For example, during the economic boom of the early 2010s, the hardships experienced by Chinese people under Japan’s brutal occupation during World War II became a favorite topic of intellectuals, amid growing criticism of their obsession with consumerism and bourgeois lifestyles, said Lana Mitter, a historian at Harvard Kennedy School who specializes in modern China.
However, the debate has led some to point out that the current discourse does not give enough credit to the Kuomintang army, which not only fought against Japan but was also an enemy of Mao Zedong’s communists, Mitter said.
Even though the Tang dynasty is more than 1,000 years old, the idea that the Tang dynasty never existed, however fanciful, could be an irritant to the party, Mitter said.
“Indeed, under the Xi administration, the Chinese Communist Party now respects the longer trajectory of China’s history. This means that all history needs to point in a direction that suggests a unified identity (rather than division), historical and cultural continuity, and the idea of ’China’ as a long-term entity that has been continuous throughout history,” he said.
Karam, a 24-year-old Beijing resident, told CNN that questioning the existence of the Tang Dynasty is a way to defy conventional wisdom and could be a way for young Chinese people to criticize the authorities in the face of an economic slowdown and increased competition for jobs and resources.
“This is a way for people to attack the establishment. It’s like saying, ‘These so-called experts are not special. They’ve all misled people. I’m the one who understands the truth. I’ve exposed them all.'”
As of mid-August, Qiao Yu’s account was blocked and all videos deleted. Today, if you search Chinese social media for questioning whether the Tang Dynasty ever existed, you’ll find content denouncing such reasoning.
The People’s Daily attempted to make a final decision in an editorial on the controversy.
“Chinese civilization has existed for 5,000 years, and the Tang Dynasty Golden Age is one of its most glorious chapters,” the magazine said.
CNN’s Shuai Zhang contributed reporting.
