From Amnesia to Collapse: China's Erased Pre-WTO History

Today's Chinese people almost all live in a fictional timeline. Their history begins from the 1990s, as if China didn't exist before that.

Joining the WTO became the "Year Zero" of this country. The story that followed was the miracle of GDP curves, the prosperity of skyscrapers and the world's factory, and a generation believing that "the world cannot do without China." In this narrative, all the suffering and difficulties before WTO accession were completely erased:

The Communist Party establishing a proxy regime on the mainland as a Soviet spy organization, not some "self-reliant revolution."

The Sun Yat-sen and Joffe Declaration: The Nationalist Party had long been infiltrated and transformed by the Comintern, with the so-called "Three Principles of the People" being merely tools.

The real reasons for Japan's invasion of China: Rather than "resource plundering," it was more about imperial order conflicts and the extension of Pan-Asianism.

The impact of Pan-Asianism: Asians' attempts at self-reliance were completely buried, replaced by the "Anti-Japanese War" myth.

The Anti-Japanese War: The CCP played almost no major role, yet later fabricated itself as the "mainstay."

The Hundred Flowers Campaign and Anti-Rightist Movement: An organized purge that completely silenced intellectuals.

The Great Famine: Tens of millions starved to death, rewritten as "three years of natural disasters."

The Cultural Revolution: A decade of catastrophe was downplayed as "ten years of turmoil," with the systematic logic behind it never acknowledged.

Closed-door policy: External isolation was whitewashed as "independence and self-reliance."

Foreign debt crisis: Foreign exchange depletion in the late 1980s became the turning point the regime had to make.

June 4th: Completely silenced, with the younger generation educated to believe it "never happened."

Mass layoffs in state-owned enterprises in the 1990s: Tens of millions of workers unemployed, yet rewritten as "successful reform."

Earlier nodes were also deliberately blurred:

The narrowing of the 1911 Revolution and the Republic: The Three Principles were reduced to "the precursor of the Chinese nation," while constitutional experiments, warlord patterns, and legal continuity were erased.

Soviet plundering of Northeast China: Post-war Manchurian industry was dismantled and taken away, yet the CCP used the myth of "fighting for the country themselves" to whitewash it.

The Korean War: Not "defending the homeland," but Mao actively joining the war, attempting to destroy South Korea unsuccessfully, becoming a failed expansion.

The 1970s turn toward America: The CCP actively changed patrons, from Soviet vassal to American vassal, yet was promoted as "diplomatic victory."

The reform and opening-up ransom chain: Actively selling labor and markets in exchange for Western capital's life support, not "self-reliance."

Hong Kong and Macau's return: Not "national rejuvenation," but the result of the CCP actively playing the role of financial agent in transactions.

This long string of history was cut off, bleached, whitewashed, and finally formed today's amnesia.

Prosperity Obscures Memory

After the 1990s, the wave of globalization pushed China to the position of "world's factory." People only saw income growth, urban expansion, and abundant goods, but forgot that behind all this were one-time international conditions: Western capital input, market opening, and cheap labor.

This period of prosperity became an obscuring factor, as if it could continue indefinitely. The younger generation thought this was normal, and the older generation was willing to forget past suffering. Thus, the entire society fell into collective illusion: history began from the 1990s, and the future would automatically replicate past growth.

Discontinuity and Amnesia

The problem is that this forgetting did not happen naturally, but was institutionally manufactured. History textbooks were constantly rewritten, grandfathers deceived grandsons, and parental experiences were dissolved in transmission. Each generation started from a fictional beginning, never having continuous memory.

Thus, even if someone wanted to reflect, they had nothing to reflect on; even if someone wanted to change, they had nothing to change. The danger lies not in decline, but in never reflecting, and even more so in the lack of action brought by reflection.

What's more dangerous is that it seems everyone actually has the answer in their hearts, as if everyone is waiting to see their own final outcome, and everyone is trapped in this web they themselves have woven.