[Since we’ve once again only got two questions here, and I don’t actually have a fluffy Chinese culture essay to show you guys, I’ve decided to go into way more detail than is necessary for these questions! I hope you don’t mind. Both of the questions today came from OmgPuppies, who tirelessly edits all my stupid typo mistakes every day. You are awesome, man.]
1. I'd be interested in your take on this: https://azure-sister.tumblr.com/post/705938217672802304/
It's someone analyzing the (English translation of the) Remembrance of Things Past series, and wondering which of its oddities are due to differences between Chinese and American culture, and which are just the idiosyncrasies of its author.
So, since I’ve got plenty of space here today, I’m just gonna go through line by line and take a look at this. Just to clarify: I’ve never read the Three Body Problem, but it’s a popular enough series that I’ve more or less pieced together the plot from online discussion about it (and it is also responsible for generating a lot of internet slang. So, uh, I’ll do my best based on a Sparks Note reading and internet discussion.
I’m not sure in what way the author of the Three Body Problem series intended it to be fantastic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an interview with him. For the most part, the Three Body Problem became so huge in China simply because China’s sci-fi genre is…practically non-existent. There’s a little bit of future or space fantasy, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a real, serious attempt at writing science fiction that isn’t some sort of pastiche of western sci-fi tropes. I assume this is because fans of the genre has had to rely on translated western works for so long that it’s shaped a generation of writers.
Chinese people more or less say outright that they so passionately praise the Three Body Problem series just because it’s a sci-fi series which involves primarily Chinese tropes, and Chinese people, and talk about problems relevant to Chinese society. Basically, to boil it down, people are just like, “Oh my god, we finally have our own sci-fi! This is amazing!”
It’s probably not as good as the most famous works of western sci-fi, just because I think any genre needs time to grow. But I also find it really…confusing why anyone would think it’s CCP propaganda? I mean, like, sure, it has to go along with CCP propaganda somewhat, because it’s published in China. There are simply elements you have to include and elements you have to avoid if you want your work published in China. And it’s written by a Chinese person. Much like how Japan is often the centre of the universe in anime, China is the centre of the universe in Chinese fiction.
But the themes of the story, if you really simplify it, boils down to something like, “War is bad. Over-exploiting resources is bad. Assuming the worst of intentions of each other is bad. Being willing to sacrifice anything just for the sake of survival is bad.” Which, I think, are themes that most sci-fi writers write about?
The only angle from which I can see it being described as “CCP propaganda” is if you assumed that “humanity” in the books is in the right, are the objective heroes. And I don’t know if the language used in the book conveyed that idea. But at least from the way the story goes, it’s not as though things go well for humanity, is it? The whole series is just things continually getting worse, and every time, it’s because someone defected in the prisoner’s dilemma. Because there’s no trust between people left. Because people are all too hyper-aware of the inherent limited nature of resources, and are too anxious about not having enough of it. Because people are so afraid of some looming faceless alien threat that they’re willing to hand over everything to dictators they know nothing about to protect them with plans they know nothing about. Dictators who end up blowing all their resources on hookers and blow anyways. Because when you see everyone as your enemy, then war never ends, and eventually, it won’t just destroy Earth, it’ll destroy the whole universe, right?
Like, if anything, I’d say this book has a very typical anti-CCP message. It just has to be conveyed very carefully and subtly.
Alright, into the meat of the post itself:
“The US are pussies about human rights and won’t make the Hard Choices needed to survive the alien invasion.”
I think this is just because the story needed to present the question of, “Just how much is it okay to sacrifice for the sake of survival?” And since the author is Chinese, one of the sides has to be China. And uh, at least compared to China, I think it’d be even more unrealistic to write about how China is squeamish about trampling all over human rights, and America has to make the Hard Choices. I don’t think this necessarily has the political implications people project onto it, because it’s not as though China is right. None of the Wallfacers really helped.
I think perhaps, the reason this tumbler thinks it’s CCP propaganda, is that they assume in a story, there had to be a Good Side and a Bad Side. There had to be a correct answer to the question, “Just how much is it okay to sacrifice for the sake of survival?” And assumed that China would represent the correct answer. And of course, China makes a bunch of decisions that the CCP absolutely would, and they assume the author intends us to think these are the right decisions.
Whereas I think the author is trying to say that, “There aren’t any right decisions. It’s shit either way.” Sort of like writing a book about just how much chemo should you do before you give up on treating your cancer.
“The alien supercomputers can listen in on every conversation and see everything that people are doing but they can’t read minds, so the UN selects four people called Wallfacers and gives them dictatorial power, and I would buy this plot point in an American novel, but every way that everyone interacts with the Wallfacers is just subtly wrong.”
I have no idea how people interact with the Wallfacers. But yeah, if people react subtly weirdly, that probably is a cultural thing. Once I’m done with the history series, I might consider going through the Three Body Problem and doing a more detailed analysis (but I hear it’s really long, so I dunno. I guess Chinese history is also really long though.)
“Someone invents a brain science thing that allows you to rewrite your brain so that you can’t not believe something, and the story is like “obviously you should rewrite all of your soldiers’ brains so that they can’t not believe that they will win, this will improve military preparedness.””
From what I found out, this wasn’t an “obviously” at all. The main problem facing every society in the universe in the Three Body Problem is early defection in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The Dark Forest exists because you cannot let anyone find out your society exists, or else it’ll be immediately wiped out, because people already assume that if they don’t kill you in the crib, you’ll kill them when you’re grown up. Defection is such a norm that people cannot imagine cooperation.
In a story about such a theme, it’s almost unavoidable for the subject of brainwashing to come up, as a way for society to at least guarantee internal cooperation, so they don’t self-destruct before facing outer threats. There are definitely two sides of the argument in the book, one side insisting on full mind control, the other insisting on none. The compromise they eventually reached was to only brainwash grunts, and only with the message of guaranteed victory. This compromise wasn’t arrived at because anyone involved necessarily thinks it’s a good idea, but because it’s the minimum possible gesture to please both sides.
On the for-brainwashing side, at least this technology was in fact put to use in helping people unite against the alien threat, instead of allowed to sit in a corner and gather dust. On the against-side, it limits the number of people affected, and uses a message that (hopefully) minimally affects normal daily life—it’s a strict restriction that prevents anybody from abusing the technology for hookers and blow.
I’ll also note a very subtle language connotation thing. The precise message inserted is “人类必胜”—humanity will have certain victory. Here, certain victory has a very strong connotation of certain eventual victory. It doesn’t mean the soldiers believe they’ll win every battle, just that their sacrifices will eventually result in them winning the war. Certain victory is a phrase often told to soldiers sent on suicide missions, like a sort of reassurance that their death has meaning.
“There are “political cadres”—like, first, that that’s a job, and second that they’re like “people will get doomier as it comes closer to the time for the invasion, so we need to cryosuspend political cadres from the present so that they can keep up morale/expel people who think we’re going to lose.”
“Political cadre” is a…um…translation, I guess. The precise word used is 政委, political commissar, which is a job where you investigate other government officers to make sure they’re not breaking the rules. Like, a specific anti-corruption (and anti-other behaviour that’s against the regulations) police. They also used to be the thought police, as far as sniffing out people who aren’t fully devoted to the CCP. I guess they still do that too, but they’re a lot more chill about it.
I’m not sure if there’s a specific job that corresponds to that in America. FBI is too broad. So I see why they had a hard time translating the term. They’ve got enormously more importance in Chinese society, because there’s, um, enormously more rule-breaking in Chinese society.
As far as the sparks note version of the book, at least, I don’t think freezing political cadres actually impacts the plot. And I don’t think it’s ever mentioned that other people weren’t allowed to sign up for cryosuspension if they were important enough to warrant it. I think this might literally just be a plot device, because the invasion takes place over 400 years, and the author doesn’t want to write about, like, 10 generations of protagonists. This is how he justifies the same group of people witnessing the whole thing play out, while keeping interstellar travel times semi-realistic. I guess.
Especially since I don’t think I recall people actually getting “doomier”. For the most part, they seemed relatively confident that Earth was making a lot of progress in their preparation against the Three Body aliens, until the water droplet fucks shit up. And then not long after that, they figured out the MAD solution, and then they lived in peaceful coexistence with the Three Body Aliens for years and years. So yeah, I think this is just a plot device.
“There’s a plot point being foreshadowed that the fundamental law of xenosociology is that all species naturally need to exterminate all other species.”
Yeah, that’s the central thesis of the entire trilogy. And it’s the fundamental reason why the universe is on the brink of destruction. Nobody likes this. Nobody wants to live like this. But nobody can get out, because it’s a collective action problem. Everyone needs to step back from the nuclear button at the same time, and then trust everyone else to never press it again. And there’s no trust left after millennia of rocket tag.
I don’t think the author necessarily is trying to push the message that “a fundamental law of sociology is that all societies naturally need to exterminate all other societies.” I think it’s pretty easy to tell by how generally miserable and scared everyone is (even the highest dimensional aliens), that he probably thinks this is a bad state for the universe to be in. And maybe our society shouldn’t believe in that kind of shit either.
“The UN functions like the Chinese Central Committee but for the world.”
Yeah, I don’t think the author thinks that about the UN right now, on earth. He justifies in the book that it’s the imminent alien invasion that unites all the nations of Earth into defending against the common enemy first. And since the UN was already around as an international organisation, it was used as the platform for pooling all of Earth’s resources into its biggest battle yet.
“One of the Wallfacers is the president of Venezuela who did a great job at implementing socialism. He is also (of course) an engineer.”
I’m pretty sure this is just the author going along with CCP requirements. I don’t think it matters at all who the Wallfacers are—just that their ideas inevitably make the situation worse. I think he was required to have a balance of capitalist and socialist representatives, and aside from China, Venezuela was just an uncontroversial pick, because (back then) nobody in China knows much about Venezuela at all, and it really was pretty functional for a socialist country (back then).
Okay, whew, onto our second question:
Does the hukou system mean that China doesn't have many apartment buildings?
You mean, like buildings for rent? There are plenty of those. Although it’s crucially important that you own a house, houses are also mindblowingly expensive in China. Like, I know America also has cities with mindblowing housing prices. But for the most part, it’s just those cities. You can go to tiny towns like Elk River, Idaho, and I bet houses there are cheap as fuck. But I come from a backwaters middle-of-nowhere rural village in China. I can walk out my door and take a leisurely stroll down the road, and come upon people farming with almost pre-industrial technology. And our local housing prices is still, like, a million goddamn RMB for a regular sized 3 bedroom unit.
So there’s tons of people who can’t afford to buy houses and are forced to rent. The hukou system just means that nobody wants to rent for life, like some people do in America. Unless you’re from a very wealthy family that can empty six wallets to help you buy a house young, people’s dream is to work hard all their life, save up, eventually buy a house when they’re middle-aged, just in time to qualify for all those benefits you really need in old age, like healthcare and social security checks. And then pass that house down to your children. Then, hopefully, your children can work hard all their life, save up, eventually buy a house, and put it aside to collect rent on, and then after three generations or so, your family can become landlords and never have to suffer the oppressive boot of the capitalist again.
As you can clearly see, this system is not very, um, sustainable. And that’s the root of almost all of China’s economic issues. Housing prices are too high, because people have too much faith in them as an investment product, because housing prices have been rising so much while China developed. So people want houses, but can’t afford it. So they have no access to public schools or hospitals or social security. So people don’t have kids. So the population shrinks. So the people waiting on rental income (which relies on there existing young people who can’t afford to own yet) have less people to rent to. So houses don’t make as much money. So they become less valuable. So the housing market starts to collapse. So people’s houses are now worth less than their mortgage. So they can’t afford to have kids. So the population shrinks. So nobody’s buying houses because they’re a bad investment now. So real estate developers start going bankrupt, and not actually delivering on the houses that were promised. So tons of people get fucked. So people don’t want to buy houses even more. And they don’t want to have kids.
I am worry.
"You are awesome, man."
It's true, I am pretty great.
In terms of the mind-control thing, I think Azure Sister's point wasn't about the morality of mind control but about pragmatism. Making it so your soldiers can't not believe that they'll win seems like it might very well make them worse soldiers because they'd be way too overconfident.
As regards the political cadres, it's also portrayed that their establishment of "the correct line" is a vital part of military strategy.
I can't find the article now, but I read that for a long time the censors in China were particularly down on science fiction because it can be hard to tell when it's supposed to be political commentary. For instance, if someone portrays a race of insectoid aliens that live in a strictly-regimented hive, is that supposed to be a criticism of the PRC?