WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Contrary to what many scholars expected back in January 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic did not become China’s Chernobyl moment. Instead, more than a year later, the world has fallen into a collective amnesia that is familiar to Chinese citizens. As Kai Strittmatter pointed out in his book We Have Been Harmonized (2020), although the Chinese government’s cover up in the early stages of the pandemic caused the virus to spread rapidly around the world, China’s propaganda machine “harnessed the virus for itself in the competition between systems”. While many democratic countries still struggle to contain the virus, China proudly presents itself as “the country with superior political system and therefore had what it takes to become the new global leader”.