China Dream

Not Recommended. I must admit I often find it difficult to review foreign language political fiction. I find Satire as a genre is hindered by translation and cultural differences far more than most, and that can sometimes make it difficult to know if if I have a good grasp on the text or not. What things do i not understand because they are poorly presented, and what things do I not understand because it was written with a mind qualitatively different to my own? I also had this problem with the Strugatsky brothers' 'Hard to be a God' and Zamyatin's 'We'. Nonetheless, There comes a time to simply come clean, and say what I thought about the book. In China Dream's case, it's nothing good. The book initially caught my attention with the blurb, proportioning to be focused on "plans for a microchip that will be implanted into the brain of every citizen to replace all painful recollections with a collective dream of national supremacy." As a Neuroscientist I am very interested in the ethical quandaries my field brings to the fore, and given China et. al are already using face-tracking AI based on bioinspired artificial neural networks, an exploration into the collusion of neuroscience and authoritarianism seems like a timely topic. Unfortunately, China Dream has little if anything to do with this. The main character is the party-appointed head of the bureau funding the science of the 'China Dream' microchip, but his story has absolutely nothing to do with the development, implementation, or outcomes of the technology. It's literally just his job description, and has nothing else to do with the book. Rather, China Dream is more akin to a 'slice of life' following the corrupt exploits of the main character, as he goes about his day taking bribes, texting women, and seeing prostitutes. There was more sex in this book than red flags, and some of it was quite graphic, if tepid. In my understanding, the point was to provide a portrayal of a Communist Party Official counter to the one favoured by the Chinese Government; corrupt, libidinous, immoral, unsympathetic, and hypocritical. On the one hand, this is certainly a brazen act of defiance - and one that got the book and author banned from china -, but on the other hand the overall statement 'party officials are corrupt' is hardly the cutting or interesting satire. China Dream fails to take the satire a step further - there is no real narrative here, no real plot, and not even any real character development - It's a simple portrait and, although defiant, not a compelling one. The narrative hardly contains the depth to warrant the back-cover comparison to Orwell. Throughout the main character's adventures in corruption, he suffers frequent flashbacks to his time as a soldier in the Red Guard. These flashbacks are titbits, and don't themselves contain a threading narrative that I could detect, but rather serve to contrast with the character's current way of life, or play on his current worries. These flashbacks are sometimes rich in historical detail, but it often becomes difficult to follow along because not much is given context. For example, much is made of the violent Rivalry between two Red Guard factions - the East is Red and the Million bold Warriors- that have organised around different interpretations of Mao's ideals, however what their interpretations are, what their differences in interpretation or demography are, or any details aside from the name are left out. I felt like I had to top reading and do extensive research in order to get a handle on what was going on; who the players were, what they wanted, and what their power base was, and I quickly found my self searching for answers in the academic history literature. As the novel progresses, bouts of flashbacks become more frequent and interfere with his life more, ultimately fuelling his (entirely off-screen) passion for the China Dream project, which will replace all citizen's memories with a collective memory of national supremacy (whatever that is supposed to mean is not explored in the text). Eventually, the main character realises he doesn't want to lose some of his memories - and here it seems is the main convergence point of the book, but it's played like a cheap 'Got ya!' - this party official seeking to force all citizens to lose their memories, doesn't want to lose his memory. Again, it doesn't quite have the depth or cut I was after, especially given in the very next chapter there is an about-face, and it's back to business as usual. In the preface, the author notes that he wrote China Dream in a rage on a whim, reacting to the latest excess of the Chinese government. That's as noble a reason to write a novel as i've heard, but I don't think it absolves the need for drafting or outlining. China Dream reads like a Landry List of actions and sexting, and the text can often be difficult to penetrate. I'm not confident I haven't been entirely unfair in my appraisal of the book due to having missed something important about the forest while trying to navigate the trees. I often found myself having to re-read sections to understand what was going on (And sometimes, simply giving up and moving on), and mostly, I was just bored. And that really sums up my experience with China Dream. Mostly, I was just bored.