I’m pretty pessimistic about the Chinese government because I think there is no balance within it or any institution, country or organization that ca… - Nanfu Wang

People in China who praise the government despite that they have family that died from Covid because of the lack of medical response and lack of care from the government, but they still say they are appreciative of the government, I look at those people and they could be my family or my friends. I would never look at them with disgust or contempt or as morally superior. I understand how they became that and how they got their information, how their ideology was formed.

We all want certain things. We all want transparency. We all want accurate information. And especially with the experience of coming from China, knowing how somebody could firmly believe in something that was not true. I would never look at any of the subjects in China who say they love, they admire, they appreciate Xi Jinping and they appreciate what the Chinese government does with contempt or with disgust. I would never do that. Because I know what they came from, and I know what made this happen.

Memory is the central part of the individual identity… and I think that’s true with a nation, too. What a nation is how the nation remembers its past, and with the authoritarian government in China, so far recent history has been written in the authorities’ narrative; how they came into power, and what has happened since they came into power, have been revised in a way that fits into the official narrative.