Imagine a world where the People's Republic of China had entered 'the prosperous time' and autocracy continued to maintain its grip against the background of global unrest and pharmacological control. This is the plot of a recent science fiction novel in China, popularised due to its concentration on the social and political future of the country. Its author has enthusiastically supported its spread from Hong Kong to the mainland, where it has become a viral success.
Chen Guanzhong's work has proved a successful distillation of the moral vacuities that grip the Chinese audience. Just as we in the West often perceive their political contract as an unspoken surrender of civil and political freedoms for economic prosperity, so the same harsh trade-off forms part of this examination of liberty. Yet, this is not the dominant theme of this self-described 'realist' novel.
For what pervades China and stalks its citizens is the very opposite of the jurisprudential politics of the United States. Ever since 1949, the republic has been subjected to a series of purgings so that the collective memory can no longer muster shared evocations of past crises. In this way, has the communist autocracy survived. The latest example was Tianmen Square. In the novel, the Chinese authorities undertake another violent crackdown and with the aid of drugs bring back a stable order. Again, they are aided in this by the collective forgetting of the population, as seen in the past.
China 2013 may invoke science-fictional elements but it is focused readily on the past: envisioning another round of violence and forgetfulness as the price for the Fat Years.