Who Manufactured Pseudo-History Theories? The Emergent Collective Creation of Historical Narratives on the Chinese Internet

Zy Liu and Di Yuan
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Zy Liu: Universal Life Church

No re83q_v2, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: This paper examines the formation, expansion, and functions of pseudo-history theories (伪史论) on the Chinese internet from the perspective of cultural economics, and proposes the analytical concept of “Emergent Collective Creation.” This concept refers to the process whereby a large number of relatively independent content producers, acting on the basis of their respective local motivations and in the absence of any unified overall plan, generate a collective narrative system that exceeds the original planning and control of any single participant through imitation, competition, the recombination of arguments, and the migration of topics. The paper first investigates relevant figures who possess formal academic credentials or publishing experience and analyzes the pathways through which early pseudo-history resources entered public circulation. It then takes as examples the extension of pseudo-history theories from ancient Greece and Rome to other civilizations, historical figures, and issues concerning Chinese dynastic history, exploring how competition for traffic, content imitation, and the selective recombination of historical materials drive narrative expansion. Finally, using online controversies surrounding the film The Penghu Naval Battle as a case study, it analyzes how pseudo-history theories have been deployed by different participants in conflicts over historical identity and in online opinion confrontation, and discusses possible links between controversial historical discourses and public trust in academic authority. The paper argues that even dispersed individual actions lacking unified coordination may, through indirect interaction, produce collective narrative outcomes and enable pseudo-history theories to move from a form of content competition for traffic into ideological contention. Because this study relies primarily on publicly available online materials, publications, and media reports, and lacks internal platform data as well as continuous records at the creator level, the mechanisms identified remain exploratory explanations whose chains of transmission, causal relations, and actual effects await further verification.

Date: 2026-10-12
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:re83q_v2

DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/re83q_v2

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