Top Secret · The Times of India

A Chinese remix of an old phantom-time conspiracy

A viral claim that the Tang dynasty never happened borrows its whole playbook from a 1990s European hoax, and Beijing’s censorship reflex is being sold as proof rather than routine.

Short video platforms have found a new hobby: erasing centuries. The claim doing rounds on Chinese social media borrows almost exactly from Heribert Illig’s 1991 ‘phantom time hypothesis’, which tried to delete three hundred years of European history through calendar drift. Swap Charlemagne for Emperor Xuanzong and the trick is identical, just with fresh astronomy props.

The Tang dynasty (618-907) survives in tomb epitaphs, Japanese and Silla court diaries, Abbasid travel accounts and coins dug from soil that has not read a script since. Solar eclipses recorded by Tang astronomers still match modern retro-calculations to the day. That is not weak evidence; it is the kind that rarely lies.

Beijing’s censors have reportedly moved against the videos, and coverage like the Times of India piece treats that as proof the theory has bite. It does not. Chinese state media suppresses unorthodox history reflexively, whether the claim is credible or cranky; a takedown notice is not a peer review.

What’s missing from most reporting is the actual astronomical calculation behind the claim, so scepticism stays the sane default. Until someone publishes the maths, this reads like clickbait dressed in eclipse tables. File it under doubt sold as discovery.

Source: The Times of India source