When the result of a sporting match becomes a foregone conclusion and lesser players are subbed in to run out the clock, announcers often term it “garbage time.” The latest term to sweep the Chinese internet holds that nations, too, experience a similar phenomenon: the “garbage time of history” (历史的垃圾时间, lìshǐ de lājī shíjiān). Coined by the essayist Hu Wenhui in a 2023 WeChat post, “the garbage time of history” refers to the period when a nation or system is no longer viable—when it has ceased to progress, but has not yet collapsed. Hu defined it as the point at which “the die is cast and defeat is inevitable. Any attempt to struggle against it is futile.” Hu’s sweeping essay led with Soviet stagnation under Brezhnev and then jumped nimbly between the historiography of the collapse of the Ming Dynasty and Lu Xun’s opinions on Tang Dynasty poetry. Unasserted but implied in the essay is that China today finds itself in similar straits. CDT has translated a small portion of the essay to illustrate its main points:
During Brezhnev’s nearly 20 years in power (1964-1982), the New Russian Empire lashed out in all directions, and even seemed capable of taking down mighty Uncle Sam. Today, with the advantage of hindsight, it is easy to recognize that [the Soviet] colossus had feet of clay, and was a hollow shell riven with internal difficulties. The 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, in particular, plunged the empire into a quagmire. It would be fair to say that the 1989 fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union both began in 1979.
I am willing to state unequivocally that the “garbage time” of the Soviet Union began in 1979. Gorbachev only hastened the end of that garbage era.
[…] In [Chinese-American historian] Ray Huang’s opinion, the history of the Ming Dynasty came to an end in 1587, during the fifteenth year of the Wanli Emperor’s reign. The subtext of Huang’s “macro-historical” viewpoint is that that was the year in which all of Chinese history came to an end, as well. The rest, including the remaining three hundred years of the Qing Dynasty, had lost any historical “significance” and were nothing more than a “garbage time” in history.
[…] In history, as in all competitive sports, there will always be some garbage time. When that time comes, the die is cast and defeat is inevitable. Any attempt to struggle against it is futile, and the best you can hope for is to reach the end with as much dignity as possible. [Chinese]
The Chinese state has struck back against use of the term “garbage time.” The East is Read, a Substack blog run by the Chinese think tank the Center for China and Globalization, translated three essays rebutting the term. The first, by a former Xinhua journalist, attacked the phrase as a product of “literary youth” who “idolize bourgeois ‘universal values’ and fantasize about transplanting these values and even political systems to China.” The second, published by a prominent academic in Beijing, argued that the world is undergoing “structural subversions and epochal surpassings between the East and the West in commodities, currency, brands, information, knowledge, systems, and even race and ideology” that should not be “tarnished and distorted” by the phrase. The last, published by the official newspaper of Beijing’s municipal Party committee, held that the term is a “logical fallacy” and attacked those who would “lie flat” before the “dawn of victory.”
Some analysts, both Western and Chinese, hold that the phrase refers primarily to economic anxiety, thus placing it in the same tradition as “Kong Yiji literature” and the viral portmanteau “humineral.” Bloomberg framed it as an expression of “rising public discontent over President Xi Jinping’s economic agenda.” State media has made a similar categorization. An essay originally published to The Intersect (交汇点, jiāohuìdiǎn), a mobile news outlet controlled by Jiangsu’s provincial Party committee, argued that efforts to characterize China as being in “garbage time” are disingenuous and false, and specifically cited a sudden influx of foreign travel bloggers who have sung the nation’s praises:
Over the years, Western countries have waged continuous “cognitive warfare” against China. Western media narratives about China have swung between “peak China,” “overcapacity,” “threat to the global order,” and “on the brink of collapse.” These views are inherently contradictory, and not one of them has yet come to pass. Why is that? Because the real China does not exist in some “separate universe.” This year, “China travel” has become a viral global trend. Foreign tourists are flocking to China to experience its beautiful scenery, bustling streets, and modern conveniences. These foreign tourists, who rave about China with cries of “So city!,” would never think of it as a place mired in the garbage time of history. In today’s China, there are so many stories [that encapsulate China’s economic development] like “moon mining,” and “raising fish in space.” Anyone who drones on about “garbage theory” while fixating solely on the growing pains of a developing economy in transition has made their ill intentions abundantly clear. [Chinese]
Online, the phrase has become a meme to express economic anxiety. (Of course, overt expressions of political dissent are often heavily censored.) At The Guardian, Amy Hawkins reported on how Chinese Internet users have adopted of the term as a way to express bleak sentiments about the Chinese economy:
The sentiment can be summed up by a graphic, widely shared on social media – and since censored on Weibo.
Entitled the “2024 misery ranking grand slam”, it tallies up the number of misery points that a person might have earned in China this year. The first star is unemployment. For two stars, add a mortgage. For a full suite of eight stars, you’ll need the first two, plus debt, childrearing, stock trading, illness, unfinished housing a-nd, finally, hoarding Moutai, a famous brand of baijiu, a sorghum liquor.
“Some people say that history has garbage time,” wrote one Xiaohongshu user who shared the graphic, along with advice about self-care. “Individuals don’t have garbage time.”
[…] But some social media users are sanguine about being online in such an era. One Weibo blogger, who feared his account might soon be deleted because of a post he made about a recent food safety scandal, wrote a farewell to his followers. “No matter what happens, I am very happy to spend the garbage time of history with you”. [Source]
The meme graphic referred to by Hawkins in the article above:
While there has been a robust discussion surrounding the phrase and widespread adoption of it as a meme, some online references to the “garbage time of history” have been censored. A WeChat essay published in 2023 building on the concept was censored. At Global Voices, Oiwen Lam translated the line that may have led to the censorship of the essay:
“Whenever history enters garbage time, the first to fall is always cultural figures and thinkers. Cultural catastrophes have recurred throughout history, marked by the disappearance of sharp criticism. Then silence is considered ill-intentioned, and inadequate praise becomes a sin. Finally, only one voice is left: Lies.” [Source]
There is also soft search censorship of the term on Sogou, according to a tool developed by Citizen Lab. Searches for the “garbage time of history” return only state-sponsored results, but are not subject to a blanket ban. On WeChat, however, there are dozens of articles and videos debating the term—and China’s relation to it.
