Zhejiang agency says pseudo-historical claims – made worse by AI – reflect ignorance and fracture social cognition
Aristotle and Ancient Greece never existed.
In a post on Wednesday, “Zhejiang Propaganda” – a social media account affiliated with the Zhejiang provincial publicity department – warned about the rise of the “pseudo-historical school” online. The school promotes conspiracy theories that deny Western history and claim key achievements of Western civilisation actually originated in China.
“[The] pseudo-historical school of thought has become a negative ideological trend that spreads through the internet and fractures social cognition,” the post cautioned.
“ Such claims appear to promote national confidence**,** but in reality they reflect ignorance of exchanges between civilisations. In essence, they represent another form of cultural [insecurity].”
The concept of “cultural confidence” became a key part of the “Four Confidences” promoted by President Xi Jinping in 2016 – confidence in the path, theory, system and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and was later written into the Communist Party constitution.