How a Decades-Old Blood Rumour About China's Forbidden City Circulated Again in 2026

The Palace Museum in Beijing issued a direct rebuttal on 26 April 2026, calling circulating claims that the Forbidden City had used 60,000 tonnes of pig blood to "dispel evil" entirely without foundation. The statement marked a rare public response by China's most-visited cultural institution to a specific online falsehood — one that had apparently gathered enough traction to warrant an official denial. The episode illustrates how entrenched misinformation about Chinese cultural sites can resurface and spread, often far beyond the communities where it originated.

The rumour in question appears to have circulated previously in various forms over the past two decades, periodically resurfacing whenever China-related content attracts fresh attention online. In April 2026, it reappeared in Chinese-language social media feeds before crossing into English-language platforms, prompting the Palace Museum's public denial. Museum officials did not specify which channels had amplified the claim most recently, nor did they attribute it to any particular source.

China has long grappled with the challenge of managing international perceptions, and its cultural institutions have increasingly become actors in that effort. The Forbidden City — visited by more than 80 million people in 2019 before the pandemic — functions simultaneously as a heritage site, a tourism draw, and a symbol of Chinese civilisation. When claims about its practices circulate globally, they carry weight that similar claims about less-visited institutions would not. This symbolic prominence makes the site a recurring target for unfounded narratives, whether offered as historical curiosity or as evidence of broader cultural cruelty.

The spread of the pig blood rumour followed a pattern common to misinformation about China: a claim rooted in secondhand accounts, amplified by social-media sharing, and lent an appearance of credibility by its repetition across multiple unverified posts. The Palace Museum's rebuttal — issued through official channels and reported by the South China Morning Post — represented the standard institutional response: a denial backed by no evidence of any such practice, framed without elaboration. What the statement did not address was the structural question of how such a claim could circulate at scale in 2026, in an information environment where fact-checking tools are more accessible than at any prior point in the rumour's documented history.

The Chinese government's broader approach to countering false narratives about the country operates through a combination of official rebuttals, state-media amplification, and diplomatic responses at the international level. In this case, the Palace Museum's statement fulfilled the first function. State-media outlets including Xinhua and Global Times subsequently reported the denial, extending its reach. The Ministry of Culture did not issue a separate statement, though officials have previously characterised misinformation about cultural practices as a feature of hostile information campaigns targeting China's international standing.

Whether such corrections meaningfully reduce the spread of the underlying claim is difficult to establish with available evidence. Research into the lifecycle of cultural misinformation consistently finds that corrective information reaches fewer people than the original false claim, particularly when the original claim plays to existing narratives about a given country or society. In this instance, the pig blood rumour taps into a long-standing Western trope — one with roots in 19th and early 20th-century accounts of Chinese cultural practices that were rarely subject to verification. That the claim has proven durable does not lend it credibility; it does, however, suggest that its appeal is structural rather than evidential.

For Chinese cultural institutions, the practical implications are significant. The Forbidden City and its managing authority must weigh the reputational cost of remaining silent against the risk that a direct rebuttal lends additional visibility to a claim that might otherwise dissipate. The Palace Museum chose the latter course in April 2026, and the rumour appears to have diminished in circulation following the denial. Whether it resurfaces in subsequent months or years remains to be seen. The track record of similar falsehoods suggests it likely will, in a form that may or may not be recognisable as the same claim.

The episode offers a narrow but instructive window into the mechanics of how China-related misinformation spreads in the digital age. A claim with no credible origin, no documented historical basis, and no apparent evidentiary foundation can gather sufficient momentum to prompt an official rebuttal from one of the country's most prominent cultural institutions. The information environment that enables this outcome is not unique to China — similar dynamics affect coverage of nearly every major nation with a contested international profile. What differs is the volume of false claims in circulation at any given time, and the institutional resources available to counter them.

This publication reported the Palace Museum's denial as a factual rebuttal of a specific unfounded claim, without treating the rumour itself as a credible allegation warranting independent verification.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://t.me/SCMPNews/29432
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City