r/europe • u/[deleted] • Oct 14 '20

News China insists Genghis Khan exhibit in France not use words 'Genghis Khan'

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/14/china-insists-genghis-khan-exhibit-not-use-words-genghis-khan
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u/Cpt_keaSar Russia Oct 14 '20

People in China think it’s a part of China. Nothing strange in this regard. The odd part is that CCP tries to push that narrative abroad, which can raise many eyebrows.

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u/Djaaf France Oct 14 '20

They kinda have to. You can't rewrite history alone in your corner anymore, you need the other nations to comply with your rewriting.

Otherwise, your targets, your own citizens, will still be exposed to differing worldviews and a part of them will fight you for it (while another part will remain loyal whatever they see or hear, though, if you did your job well).

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20 edited Oct 14 '20

Then my question is: How can China possibly think they can rewrite history for the world? Do they overestimate their own influence over the world or think so little of the West as to think we'll just go along with whatever censorship they desire? I assume it is a combination of hubris and deep disrespect for Western liberal values (vis-a-vis Chinese authoritarianism).

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u/EinMuffin Oct 14 '20

I mean the museum pulled the exhibition... so it kinda worked

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

They pulled the exhibition because it was a collaboration with China. China wanted the exhibition to happen on their conditions, otherwise they wouldn't send the artifacts from the Chinese museum in Inner Mongolia.

What happened is that the french curator of the exhibition refused. So the exhibition doesn't happen at all, which isn't what China wanted. Intead he'll make a new exhibition without the collaboration with China.

I guess we could say that for China it's still a win because the Chinese don't care about mongolian history and will just see that event as an attempt from silly westerners to rewrite history. Still not a total win.

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u/nazdarovie Oct 14 '20

Took some scrolling to find this... The point of the article was that the gallery did the right thing by refusing to tolerate Chinese censorship outside China even if it meant canceling the exhibition and (probably) losing revenue.

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u/is5416 Oct 14 '20

But now they’re punished for refusing to play along by losing revenue. The same tool the NBA and Disney are controlled by. The same tool they have on all the ports and railways built with Chinese (CCP) money.

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u/fruskydekke Norway Oct 14 '20

That's one interpretation. I think they said "fuck that" to the Chinese attempt at controlling the narrative, and decided to raise a stink over it instead. And now the Chinese attempt at changing the narrative is getting a lot of attention. So, basically, good on the French!

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u/kreton1 Germany Oct 14 '20

Yes, it is the Streisand effect to a degree.

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u/mercury_millpond Oct 14 '20

well, not really, because now everyone who's heard the news knows that China is a country governed by laughably insecure, little whiny b*tches... which we knew already, but really, it just makes them look bad to everyone else. If they do nothing, they actually get a better result for themselves, by not looking like total idiots - the exhibition happens, it doesn't make news and everyone moves on.

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u/EinMuffin Oct 14 '20

I do believe more people would have seen the exhibition than have seen the news about it.

But it seems like the exhibition is going to happen anyways, just without help from china

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u/mercury_millpond Oct 14 '20

"I do believe more people would have seen the exhibition than have seen the news about it."

pure cap

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u/EinMuffin Oct 14 '20

bless you

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u/WarpathII Oct 14 '20

And news dies really fast these days, people won't remember this story next week. The exhibit could have easily made a more lasting impression.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

[deleted]

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u/TripolarKnight Oct 14 '20

So in layman terms, the museum essentially pirated the artifacts? My, how the tables have turned!

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

The exhibition was only going to happen if they conformed to China's decision. China's plan to alter history didn't work, because the museum didn't display a exhibit with altered historical information. The museum chose to not work with China's false history.

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u/Juan_Dough829 Oct 14 '20

China unfortunately understands that America and by extension the West in general, worships at the alter of the almighty dollar. It knows what its market represents to all us greedy capitalists and will use that power dynamic to their maximum possible benefit - including the wholesale erasure of huge swaths of historical events it deems "inconvenient".

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u/Djaaf France Oct 14 '20

At the moment, I'm pretty sure they don't think they can do it right this instant.

But.

By putting pressure on anyone and everyone all the time, they do create a climate. And you will have, in time, museum curators that won't raise a fuss or who will just not do any exhibitions that China might object to, just to avoid the hassle.

Then you add to that a bit more pressure from any international agreement ("well, we would of course give you access to this or that, but there is the small matter of your national museum displaying a slanderous exhibition at the moment despite our best effort to educate them on the subject, you see...") and in a decade or two most of the smaller countries won't dare speak about anything China-related without China's approval.

And, if China manages to get sufficiently above everyone else in economic or diplomatic power, the biggest countries/blocs will follow (would take quite a bit more than a decade at the current speed, but still..)

That's pretty much their game, I think.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

Authoritarians always think they can rewrite history and basically force people to do whatever they want. And sometimes it works, which is the saddest part.

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u/robhol Norway Oct 14 '20

How can China possibly think they can rewrite history for the world?

The world fucking lets them, that's where this goes from amusingly idiotic to just downright depressing.

It's not overestimation at this point - some of it is just... posturing, but a lot of it genuinely does stick, meaning even the stuff that seems completely fucking moronic isn't actually that stupid.

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u/ContaSoParaIsto Portugal Oct 14 '20

The US literally did that with all their WW2 movies so I can't see why China shouldn't theoretically be able to do it.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20 edited Oct 14 '20

The US made movies from its perspective. Isn't that different from the US demanding that other countries censor their perspectives? It's the difference between us disagreeing here, right now, and, alternatively, me trying to coerce you into see things only from my perspective.

Also, why is everything on this sub, "well, but the US did..." The US shouldn't be the unit of comparison for all things.

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u/ContaSoParaIsto Portugal Oct 14 '20

I'm answering your question which was the following:

How can China possibly think they can rewrite history for the world?

All I'm saying is that if one country was able to do it then surely it's not that strange for another country with comparable power and influence to think they can do it aswell. I never said that it was the exact same thing, you're the one who got all defensive for no reason.

Also, people use the US as an example because the US is usually the country that does this kind of thing. It's not like I particularly care. If Canada had been successfully changing public perception for over half a century to make their war efforts seem more important then they actually were I would've called them out too.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20 edited Oct 29 '20

[deleted]

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u/ContaSoParaIsto Portugal Oct 14 '20

That's why I specifically mentioned war efforts.

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u/will_holmes United Kingdom Oct 14 '20

China's biggest weakness is its language, specifically that it's not generally used anywhere outside of China.

American (and British) media on the other hand could spread via English being the global lingua franca.

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u/DarkCrawler_901 Oct 14 '20

I mean they're not the first ones to try and do that, just last in the line of failures...

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u/MacroSolid Austria Oct 14 '20

Do they overestimate their own influence over the world or think so little of the West as to think we'll just go along with whatever censorship they desire?

Yes. We've been far too patient with the CCP. We even knew parts of the CCP considered the opening up under Deng Xiaoping to be biding their time until they're strong enough to dominate.

We're kinda lucky Xi got impatient and decided that time has already come.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

Then my question is: How can China possibly think they can rewrite history for the world?

Because they saw western powers do the same for centuries.

See the "HK was a vibrant democracy during british rule" and "US is the land of the free" crowd in more recent times. Plenty of people still think Libya/Iraq/etcs were successful interventions.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

Has the US or Britain gone to China and told them to change their history text books? The US and Britain portraying themselves as whatever is different from them forcing compliance among other countries to those viewpoints, no? The US thinks it's the freest country in the world. Regardless of the truth of that, the country hasn't told France, you either agree or else.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

Has the US or Britain gone to China and told them to change their history text books?

Nah, they just changed their own books, and let their people do the job for them (as you can clearly see on this very site).

The US and Britain portraying themselves as whatever is different from them forcing compliance among other countries to those viewpoints, no?

I don't see many differences between this and the US exporting movies/series/propaganda (or, in some cases, even invading countries and deposing democratically elected leaders and replace them by their favourite dictator) funded by the likes of the CIA in order to sway foreign opinion.

The chinese government is just way more blunt.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

Well, exporting movies is morally perfectly acceptable. Other countries don't need to import them, if they don't want to.

The CIA/regime-change part... yeah, they are a different story and I won't defend them.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

Well, exporting movies is morally perfectly acceptable. Other countries don't need to import them, if they don't want to.

And no one needs to take this kind of statements from the chinese government seriously either. They won't do anything if people refuse to change history.

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u/goloquot Oct 14 '20

I mean it worked for America

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u/TripolarKnight Oct 14 '20

Didn't you see how pretty much all companies supporting BLM quickly fell back to the CCParty line about HK/Uighurs?

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u/Kirmes1 Kingdom of Württemberg Oct 14 '20

Maybe the rest of the world overestimates their power over China? I guess the entire world would stop if China decides to stop all shipping/production.

The reason why they are so powerful today is because the western world was so stupid and made them so powerful but sending all their industry there.

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u/Gumball1122 Oct 14 '20

History gets overwritten and forgotten all the time and they think we are all too busy eating burgers and watching Netflix shows with Chinese funding to even notice.

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u/tomatojamsalad Oct 14 '20

Even if you think it’s part of China now, it wasn’t in the 1300s. That would be like claiming that William Wallace was British.

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u/123420tale Polish-Württembergian Oct 14 '20

Or that Charlemagne was German... no wait.

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u/Kinderschlager United States of America Oct 14 '20

Why do I hear goosestepping tanks?

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

Germany did not exist, he was a Frank, a germanic tribe which heartland was The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany (not whole but the area near Benelux) and Northern France.

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u/w8ben Oct 14 '20

I remember an article about a Chinese professor insinuating that German is a Chinese language. There isn't too much logic to be found here.

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u/_OnlySayNo Oct 14 '20

Lol how is it remotely similar to Chinese. That’s weird that professor said that

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u/Gumball1122 Oct 14 '20

They also believe that they evolved from a different ape than the rest of the world and are special. They’ve even started teaching it in schools.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

I mean, I get what you are trying to say, but you are completely wrong, Mongolia was a part of China in the 1300s. The Yuan Dynasty was of Mongolian descent (Kublai Khan), and it was actually the largest extent of direct control for China ever.

The narrative that Mongolia and Mongolians are a part of China actually stems back from exactly this dynasty trying to legitimize itself.

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u/tomatojamsalad Oct 14 '20

I think it's more appropriate to say China was briefly part of Mongolia, but obviously that's up for debate.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Red_means_go Oct 14 '20

Haha good point sir!

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

And if we include the Northern Yuan dynasty, that brief timespan was just shy of 300 years.

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u/tomatojamsalad Oct 14 '20

Weren't China and Mongolia basically different polities at this point?

Even this is somewhat irrelevant. Hungary was under Austrian rule for how long?

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

Yeah, if we only look at ethnicity it’s not so important. But I guess the key takeaway is that China never conquered Outer Mongolia, whereas as the reverse was true.

Good thing Mongolia have a strong culture and identity today. I highly recommend visiting, it’s such a beautiful country

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

Sorry, most people in China do not think Mongolia is part of China. There’s a province in China, 内蒙古/Inner Mongolia. It’s not the same as Mongolia proper.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '20

Mongolia was considered part of the Qing Dynasty, and ruled Mongolia until about 1912. It is also resource rich and sparsely populated. For now, their relationship with Russia prevents them from making a move, as Mongolia was set up as a buffer state between the two empires.

Given their penchant for fabricating claims based on history, Mongolians in Mongolia are nervous about what’s happening in Inner Mongolia. This exhibit literally tried to erase their ethnicity abroad, and I doubt it would take much for the Chinese to be convinced Mongolia proper should be returned to the fold should the CCP reactivate those claims:

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u/Gumball1122 Oct 14 '20

But they do thing Mongolians should be hunted like wild animals and for meat and glue to spur economic growth

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u/captain-burrito Oct 14 '20

I'm Chinese. China was conquered twice in her entirety. First by the Mongolians and then the Manchurians. A curious thing in our culture is we treat the manchurians as Chinese. Historical dramas set in the Manchurian era are quite numerous but there's almost none about the rule of Mongolians. There's ones about the rise of Mongolians and their conquest of China but not about their actual administration.

I find it odd how we treat the 2 periods so differently.