Xinling Li, The Manufacturing of ‘Correct Collective Memory’ in Chinese Media and the Resistance of Chinese Netizens, In Rawnsley, M.-Y.T., Ma, Y., & Rawnsley, G.D. (Eds.). (2025). Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003362500
Abstract
This chapter examines the concept of ‘correct collective memory’, articulated by China’s foreign affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying during a press conference confirming the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. It explores the construction of correct collective memory in Chinese media and the increasing challenges from rising civilian dissent enabled by new media. The Chinese government’s efforts to control negative perceptions of the zero-Covid policy through mass media propaganda ultimately failed, leading to a significant concession: the country’s reopening in response to the Blank White Paper movement. While mainstream analyses have attributed the movement’s temporary ‘success’ to the extreme inhumanity of China’s Covid restrictions, this chapter argues that new media platforms, particularly social media, have emerged as spaces for contesting memory, for example in the emergence of lockdown diaries. These platforms allow for a clash between citizen and official narratives of social events, preventing the government from easily imposing a unified correct collective memory through traditional methods like survivorship bias and collectivist storytelling.
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