[mistrial9]

related -- A Chinese woman, known by the pseudonym Zhemao, was found to have been rewriting and falsifying Russian history on Wikipedia for over a decade. She created over 200 detailed articles on the Chinese Wikipedia, which included fictitious states, battles, and aristocrats. The hoax was exposed when a Chinese novelist, Yifan, researching for a book, stumbled upon an article about the Kashin silver mine. Yifan noticed that the article contained extensive details that were not supported by other language versions of Wikipedia, including the Russian one.

Zhemao, posing as a scholar, claimed to have a Ph.D. in world history from Moscow State University and was the daughter of a Chinese diplomat based in Russia. She used machine translation to understand Russian-language sources and filled in gaps with her own imagination. Her articles were well-crafted and included detailed references, making them appear credible. However, many of the sources cited were either fake or did not exist.

The articles were eventually investigated by Wikipedia editors who found that Zhemao had used multiple “puppet accounts” to lend credibility to her edits. Following the investigation, Zhemao was banned from Chinese Wikipedia, and her edits were deleted.