By Dannie Peng

Copyright scmp

Rising Chinese scepticism towards Western classical history and its scholarly framework has found its latest target in ancient Egyptian treasures, adding an unexpected twist to the two countries’ long-term partnership.
From July last year until August this year, the Shanghai Museum hosted a major exhibition on ancient Egypt, marking the first collaboration between a Chinese state-run museum and the Egyptian government.
It was the largest exhibition of Egyptian artefacts ever staged outside Egypt over the past two decades, according to Xinhua. Egypt is a major partner in the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s plan to grow global trade.
The exhibition caught the attention of Huang Heqing, a retired art history professor at Zhejiang University, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

In July, in a series of videos posted on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, Huang asked: “Are these so-called ‘ancient Egyptian artefacts’ really 3,500 to 2,000 years old?”
Huang, who obtained his doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris, singled out a pair of grass sandals from the exhibition.
Identified as belonging to Yuya and Thuya, a married couple of Egyptian nobility, the items were believed to be 3,500 years old, placing them between 1550 and 1059 BC.
But Huang said they looked “obviously fake at first glance”.
“Any ordinary person with common sense can tell that these sandals are brand new,” he added, reasoning that over time such an object would show signs of ageing, such as dulled colour and grime.
Huang is a prominent voice in an outspoken and growing group of Chinese opinion leaders who openly question the veracity of Western history.
Their claims are generally dismissed by mainstream academics.
Tang Jigen of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen and a specialist in cultural heritage protection and utilisation refuted the claims made by Huang on social media, stating that a relatively new appearance would not automatically mean an item had been forged.
In arid and hot regions such as China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and Egypt, Tang said, artefacts were more likely to remain well preserved.
Huang has amassed over 230,000 followers. His videos on the topic have received more than 100,000 likes and tens of thousands of comments combined – a similar level of engagement to that achieved by Tang, who has nearly 430,000 followers.
The pair went back and forth in debate, with the authenticity of the shoes transcending an academic discussion and instead highlighting a deep divide in Chinese society regarding Western historical accounts and narratives.

It came amid China’s remarkable progress in science, technology, economics, culture and other fields in recent decades and has provided fertile ground for those pushing for a less Western-centric version of history, ranging from intellectuals to the general public.
Huang suggested the most direct verification approach would be to send the sandals for carbon-14 dating, or radiocarbon dating, a technique used to determine the age of organic materials. But Tang deemed this both impractical and unnecessary.
Citing concerns including cost and preservation, Tang said not all artefacts required such testing to verify their age and that items from the same tomb or stratum could generally be determined to be of the same period, eliminating the need for individual dating.
Many artefacts unearthed globally, especially those from arid desert regions, often “appear remarkably new”, he added, owing to exceptional preservation in unique natural environments.
Tang described Huang’s scepticism as “utterly ridiculous”, relying solely on subjective impressions and “common sense” without presenting solid evidence.
“Scholarship is a profession grounded in facts,” Tang said. “Once we abandon this principle and become entirely emotional, it can no longer be called academia.”
Huang declined an interview request.
In August, Amr Salah, an Egyptian historian and archaeologist, addressed such scepticism in an interview with Guancha, a Shanghai-based news site.
Salah cited the extremely arid climate and rarity of civil wars during ancient Egyptian times as reasons that some artefacts appeared modern.
But in Huang’s view, these academic details were irrelevant because, as he said in a video clip, “so-called ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek civilisations could not have existed”.
“All the ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek artefacts exhibited in China today are fabrications, insulting the intelligence of the Chinese people,” Huang continued.

Last summer, Huang told Southern Weekly newspaper that “the fact that Western history is fabricated can no longer be hidden, and Western pseudo-history is bound to collapse”.
He believed the collapse would happen within five to 10 years, adding: “I think the history of civilisation will be rewritten in the future, and the truth is that China is the main birthplace of human civilisation.”
Huang is merely one of the loudest voices spreading such theories.
Amplified by social media and with some well-known intellectuals joining in, such ideas have become increasingly prominent online, frustrating China’s professionally trained historians and archaeologists.
In discussion threads on Zhihu, China’s Quora-like platform, one commentator said: “So-called experts often dwell on trivial details – like the excavation story, the design of the shoes and the references cited – making themselves look professional while completely sidestepping the core question of authenticity.”
As Tang saw it, books, short videos and online posts backing the pseudo-historical school of thought have gained significant support and traction from the general public, while serious academic discussions rarely draw a large audience.
Some high-profile intellectuals have also entered the fray. One is Jin Canrong, a specialist in Sino-US relations at Renmin University in Beijing and an adviser to the Chinese government.
In 2023, a video clip of his speech on Aristotle went viral. In it, he said the existence of ancient Greek philosophers, including Aristotle, was not supported by written records.
More rigorous research has also sought to restore China’s role in the global historical record.
For instance, Wang Sheng-wei, a Chinese-American based in Hong Kong, retold the chronicle of Chinese exploration by studying evidence from Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, a Chinese-language map published by the Italian priest Matteo Ricci in 1602.
She argued that the Ming dynasty’s massive Treasure Fleet had reached the Americas decades before Christopher Columbus landed on the shores of the Bahamas in 1492.

As supporters of sceptics have gained popularity, however, the Chinese government has intervened.
In July, the official newspaper China Youth Daily published an article blasting those who questioned the authenticity of ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt without basing their arguments on evidence.
“While touting themselves as ‘breaking the Western-centric narrative’, they have actually created greater confusion at the factual level,” the article stated. “The self-referential view of history is less about shaping cultural subjectivity than it is about evading the truth.”
And some have criticised such claims as casting China in an unfavourable light.
A Chinese PhD student studying biology at the University of Edinburgh commented on Zhihu that such a large-scale exhibition required immense human and material resources from both governments and was intended to foster cultural exchange.
Yet, the student said, years of dedicated effort were being casually defiled.
Beijing has taken some steps to cool the debate. In June, a number of accounts were silenced on social media platforms, but many others remained unaffected.
At the same time, Western classics continue to attract a wide Chinese audience, evident in the unprecedented success of the Shanghai Museum’s ancient Egypt exhibition.
With more than 2.77 million visitors and total revenue surpassing 760 million yuan (US$106.7 million), the exhibition achieved global records for attendance and total revenue for a museum, according to China Daily.
Salah, the archaeologist, said similar Egypt-themed exhibitions would be held in more Chinese cities over the next few years.
Meanwhile, the first mainland team dispatched by the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences began its archaeological journey into ancient Egypt at the Temple of Montu near Luxor in 2018.