Historical nihilism

Historical nihilism has been defined in CCP publications as criticism of the entirety of an entity, such as the CCP, its national heroes, leaders, socialism and its official history, by citing only certain events about the entity without consideration of the whole. Although 'incorrect' interpretations of history would have been censored and punished during the period of Mao Zedong (1949–1976) and Deng Xiaoping (1978–1989), neither leader made a clear attempt to engage against 'historical nihilism' as it is specifically understood today. According to Chinese historian Zhang Lifan, the main push to fight against 'historical nihilism', according to its specific modern meaning, undertaken by the CCP has its origin following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre and coinciding events within the Eastern Bloc. In December of that year, Jiang Zemin made a speech in which he said that bourgeois liberalization had led to the spread of 'national nihilism' and 'historical nihilism', which had entered party thinking and brought about confusion. Historical nihilism is one of "The Seven Noteworthy Problems" discussed in the 2012 Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere (Document No. 9). It states that the main expressions of historical nihilism are: This view is sometimes expressed as the motto, "the two thirty years should not negate each other". ==Government uses of the term==

Media and education in China are not legally allowed to represent history in a manner that is forbidden by government censors. In 2018, the Law on the Protection of Heroes and Martyrs criminalized speech deemed slander of "heroes and martyrs". The Great Chinese Famine, the Cultural Revolution and 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre are often scrubbed or at least depicted in such a way as to avoid blame on the party. For example, films criticizing Cultural Revolution hardliners were prevalent from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, although they were later banned as historical nihilism. In 2022, Chinese social media platforms Douban, Douyin, Toutiao and Weibo all announced campaigns against content deemed to be historical nihilism. In 2023, a previously official history textbook about the Mongols in China was banned for historical nihilism. Modern Chinese history is generally presented to praise the achievements of the CCP and its role in creating a prosperous 'new China'. In 2025, the Study Times of the CCP's Central Party School stated that historical nihilism had become "subtle and covert" in an era of artificial intelligence. Collapse of the Soviet Union In a 2013 speech, Xi Jinping described historical nihilism as contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Union: In February 2022, the CCP published the documentary Historical Nihilism and the Disintegration of the Soviet Union. CCP leadership expresses concerns about historical nihilism in the context of the Soviet Union's experience with the refrain, "[t]he Soviets won the October Revolution with only a few hundred thousand members; it defeated the Nazis with a few million; but when it had tens of millions of members, it suffered a tragic collapse." == Academic analysis ==

Academics Jian Xu, Qian Gong, and Wen Yin write that the CCP's attention to historical nihilism "has gained momentum in the 21st century due to the rise of market-oriented cultural production in post-socialist China as well as the development of new media technologies." They cite the TV drama adaptation of "Red Classics" as "a pertinent example of historical nihilism caused by market orientation in cultural production," explaining: == Other uses of the term ==

According to Suisheng Zhao, some contemporary mainland Chinese scholars contend that Western scholars who describe the Qing dynasty as expansionist of engaging in historical nihilism. In the view of these scholars, some Westerner scholars attempt to emphasize aggressive aspects of the Qing in order to demonstrate that modern China is inevitably aggressive. == See also ==