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China Mobilizes Museums for Propaganda: Museum directors are told they should focus on documenting that “border regions” such as Tibet and Xinjiang were always Chinese

Now, museums are also mobilized for Chinese propaganda. The [Chinese Communist Party] CCP’s primary interest is telling what Xi Jinping calls the “China story” and emphasizing that “border regions” such as Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, or Tibet were “always part of China.”

Pan Yue, director of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, presided in Beijing on April 16 at the First National Training Session for Museum Directors. Museums, he said, should counter “incorrect historical interpretations,” including those that “attempt to position the Central Plains against border regions, the Han against non-Han groups, and Han culture against those of ethnic minorities.”

Each cultural artifact and historical account should be framed within “the overall development of the Chinese nation,” according to Pan, who emphasized that the country’s representation should be “diverse yet unified.” Pan also mentioned Xi Jinping’s thought on archeology, highlighting the alleged ancestral unity of Chinese culture within the present borders of the People’s Republic. Xi also believes that the earliest Chinese populations practiced a form of communism.

The training session was especially focused on Tibet and Xinjiang, which museums should (falsely) present as part of China from ancient times.

Pan visited Xinjiang in 2024, lecturing on Western and Uyghur critics’ “ignorance of history” and insisting that “a large amount of archaeological evidence tells us that Xinjiang has been an important part of the Chinese cultural sphere since ancient times.”

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