Chinese novelist Yan Lianke contributed a lengthy essay entitled “On China’s State-Sponsored Amnesia” to The International Herald Tribune on April 2, charging that the Chinese government has over the years been engaged in an all out campaign to fabricate certain historical facts while actively seeking to erase others from people’s memories.
　　　Yan’s statement is significant in that it constitutes an emphatic warning from a noted Chinese writer – not from the Japanese side, which has over the years sustained immeasurable damage from the outlandish fabrication of facts and history initiated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
　　　Yan’s essay begins with an anecdote shared by his Swedish colleague at Hong Kong’s City University, who told him he was stunned by reactions from 40 students from China in his class who were asked if they knew anything about what happened in Beijing on June 4, 1989, or if they were familiar with the names of Liu Binyan and Fang Lizhi.
　　　Needless to say, ”June 4, 1989” refers to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, while Fang is a Chinese astrophysicist (February 12, 1936-April 6, 2012) whose liberal ideas inspired the pro-democracy student movement of 1986-87. Fang defected to the US after the incident, passing away there in April last year.
　　　Meanwhile, Liu (February 7, 1925－Dec. 5, 2005) is a Chinese author/journalist who steadfastly exposed human rights violations and corruption within the CCP; he, too, provided psychological support to Chinese students, although he himself was not directly involved in the Tiananmen incident. Liu passed away eight years ago, after defecting to the US following the incident.
　　　Yan writes that, when asked about the Tiananmen incident, all of the 40 students from China “looked around at one another, mute and puzzled.” Obviously, none of them knew anything about the incident. In point of fact, there are many things that the entire world knows about which only the Chinese are unfamiliar with.
　　　Yan refers to yet another example: a professor friend of his asked her students from China if they had heard about the death by starvation of 30 to 40 million people during the “three years of natural disasters” in the early 1960s – a question that actually pertained to the ”Great Leap Forward“ spearheaded by Mao Zedong. When countless Chinese farmers died of starvation, Mao reportedly had their bodies buried in the paddies under a heartless theory that “(the farmers’) deaths will enrich the soil.”

A Matter of Selective Memory

　　　Yan quotes his professor friend as saying her students “responded with stunned silence,” as if their teacher in Hong Kong was “brazenly fabricating history to attack their mother country.” This episode clearly shows that these students obviously had no knowledge whatsoever about the mass starvation which their parents must definitely have seen, or at least heard about.
　　　It is apparent that Chinese students are never taught the dark side of the CCP’s history, while being told time and again that the CCP is always pure and righteous. China’s newly elected president, Xi Jinping, is currently pushing CCP leadership to create the broadest patriotic front possible under its ideological leadership. Under such a policy, there will be absolutely no possibility that China would reveal that Mao actually drove tens of millions of Chinese farmers to death. This is how determined the Chinese government is to implement this “memory deletion” operation across the nation.
　　　Yan traces the lost Chinese memories in this order: “…the AIDS epidemic caused by unhygienic blood selling; the innumerable explosions in illegal coal mines; the modern day slavery that takes place in illegal brick kilns; the rampant production of toxic milk power, toxic eggs, toxic seafood, gutter oil, carcinogenic vegetables and fruit; forced abortions; violent demolitions; mistreatment of petitioners…”
　　　Obviously, these incidents are not naturally forgotten over time in China. Rather, they are forced to be forgotten in a process forged aggressively by the Chinese government to sort out what must be remembered vs what must be forgotten. The problem is that not the communist government alone who contributes to this amnesia, but Chinese intellectuals as well. The intellectuals – “the people who are supposed to have good memories” – are “the first to become silent after being administered (institutional) amnesia by the state.”
　　　Why do Chinese intellectuals suffer “memory deletion” rather than face up to the historical record? Why do they join hands in fabricating the truth? Yan cites two factors:
　　　(1) Just look back a short while when a thick cloud of darkness covered China, making it impossible for Chinese to speak their minds. Today, one of the two windows – the economic window – is open, although it is still a small opening, enabling the people to breathe in and out more or less, and allow in some light. Their world is brighter than before. This being the case, rather than demanding that the window immediately be opened more widely, most intellectuals think it is better to wait for the window to be gradually opened. Over time they believe that the second window – that of more intellectual and social freedom – will also be opened.
　　　(2) The CCP cajoles intellectuals not only by offering them monetary incentives but also by promising them face and power. This method of appeasement has worked extremely well with a large number of intellectuals.
　　　Through such a process, warns Yan, the Chinese are steadily being forced to accustom themselves to “a loss of memories,” forgetting the past and refusing to even think about what is currently taking place around them.
　　　Over the years, the CCP has made various historical claims about the Korean Peninsula, the Senkaku Islands, and Okinawa Prefecture. The Chinese government does not only make such fabricated historical assertions externally, but also aggressively continues to teach such lies to its people. It is dead set to erase the historical record as maintained by South Korea and Japan making all Chinese believe that their fabricated history is real. The more they love their own country, the more the Chinese will hate countries such as Japan. They will most likely be convinced that it is the righteous mission of every patriotic Chinese to realize Chinese assertions within a realpolitik framework.
　　　This is indeed a dreadful reality for all of the nations neighboring China as well as those having no choice but to get along with the communist regime. Yan points out that Chinese who are ill-informed of the truth will likely all end up being the automatons of the CCP incapable of figuring things out on their own.

Manipulation of Information on a Grandiose Scale

　　　Commenting on the series of riotous anti-Japanese demonstrations that swept across China last September after then Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda nationalized three of the islets of the uninhabited Senkakus, Chinese democratization movement leader Cui Weiping described the stunning outpouring of anti-Japanese sentiments as incomparable to any past demonstrations in terms of intensity spurred by Chinese hatred of Japan. I suppose the fierceness of the demonstrations witnessed then can credibly be described as being synonymous with the intensity of the energy generated by groups of Chinese whom Mr. Yan eloquently terms as automatons manipulated by the CCP.
　　　The anti-Japanese demonstrations by Chinese burning with deep-rooted anger inflicted damage on Japanese enterprises in China worth an estimated US$100 million. Seeing the frenzied Chinese demonstrators, Cui called for restraint via the Internet. I would think it must have required tremendous courage for her to make such a call amid such a storm of anti-Japanese sentiment, as it could have easily put her in danger. As someone in the same line of business, I wish to pay my hearty respects to her for speaking up when necessary.
　　　Ironically, however, even Ms Cui believes the Senkakus belong to China, years of the CCP’s teachings having obviously thoroughly infiltrated her mind. As regards the so-called Nanjing Incident, her viewpoint follows the same line as the CCP’s. This only proves that even someone like her who is considered one of the most conscientious Chinese intellectuals is heavily influenced by the fabricated CCP version of history. This is indeed an extremely difficult situation the world must seriously cope with.
　　　That is the very reason why Japan must face up to and deal effectively with the manipulation of information by China on a grandiose scale. In point of fact, Japan stands a decidedly better chance in that struggle, because there is absolutely no need for us to lie, or fabricate information.
　　　What is required of Japan and its people is a firm resolve to never allow China to give us a bad name through fabrication of facts, past or present. For that purpose, and based on this principle, the government should expand the budget for dissemination of information overseas as soon as possible. In other words, it should provide funds to reputable think tanks, universities, and research institutes around the world so that they can be entrusted with research into historical or present-day matters that have important bearings on Japan. Vigorous activities by conscientious researchers around the world, I believe, are the first effective step towards the prevention of “memory deletion operations on a grandiose scale” envisioned by the Chinese government.

(Translated from “Renaissance Japan” column no. 553 in the April 11, 2013 issue of The Weekly Shincho)