According to some badly translated articles in official Chinese news outlets, in conjunction with the Science Museum of London, the Chinese are staging an exhibition of ancient astronaut “evidence” in Beijing next week, including more than 100 ancient carvings that the exhibit will claim depict extraterrestrial beings that came to earth in prehistory. The ancient astronaut display is part of a broader extraterrestrial-themed exhibit that mixes science fiction aliens and supposed science “fact” about aliens. The captions on the bilingual descriptive cards next to the prehistoric carvings identify them as “ancient aliens.”
If this is accurate, it is deeply disturbing that the authoritarian government that rules a fifth of the world’s population is attempting to increase belief in the ancient astronaut theory among its 1.2 billion citizens. In China, nothing happens without government approval, and the appearance of this article in China’s official propaganda organ indicates the government’s endorsement. The Jade Specimen Research Center is a division of China’s National Science and Technology Department, an official organ of the Chinese government.
But it gets worse.
The Center’s director, Wang Zhen, claims that the jades are 100 MILLION YEARS OLD and carved with a laser.
Chinese publications from two decades ago ago show that the Chinese have been secretly developing and supporting the ancient astronaut theory since the 1980s as a way of providing an alternative spiritual belief system in support of communist ideology, a replacement for traditional belief in the supernatural that communist repression could not extinguish.
But this doesn’t change the fact that China is apparently endorsing pseudoscience about ancient astronauts at the expense of legitimate history and archaeology.
I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.
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