My partner keeps trying to read it and they keep stopping and reading me passages and then looking up actual historical fact and going wtf, this book is nonsense? Does it get better?

I don’t know I haven’t read it. I told them I’d ask here. Does it get better? Is it anti communist propaganda or is the ridiculous anti communist screed that starts this book serious off just setup for something better?

Thanks for all the good answers I showed them the whole thread and they said a lot of what you all said is in line with their understanding. So basically the first bit is a caricature of the bad parts of early Chinese communism and then that gets better but it turns misogynist instead. Fun series. They’ll continue to read because we have a lot of family and friends who LOVE the book and they want to understand why but it’s helpful to have the lens on it

  • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    34·
    1 year ago

    No, it is extremely popular in China and especially among the academic and elite circles.

    A lot of the critiques about the Cultural Revolution is widely accepted within China itself (although there were still some parts that were censored in the 2022 Chinese TV adaptation). I mean, Xi himself was a victim of the Cultural Revolution.

    If you want to know the author’s political position, check out his 2001 novella Full Spectrum Barrage Jamming, a short story about a war between Russia vs NATO (originally China vs NATO but the publisher refused to publish it, so the entire plot was re-written with Russia as the protagonist instead), and mostly reflects the post-Soviet era anxiety experienced by the Chinese/Russian in the 1990s under the total domination of the US.

    However, like most Chinese boomers, he hates the typical “Western political correctness” stuff and it shows in his novels, but they have been largely edited out in the English editions so you won’t really come across them if you read them in English.

    • JuneFall [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      14·
      1 year ago

      CW

      I mean, Xi himself was a victim of the Cultural Revolution.

      Does Xi label himself solely as that though? I do know that he says that due to his time spend in rural regions he came into more contact of the rural lifestyle and thus with working people there, he read more Marxist theory and became “redder than red guards” and sometimes references to that as quite important event for his political career. Though he, too, was publicly critiqued when he was 13 years old. That of course will leave some marks and effects.

      His father was publicly “self” critiqued, demoted, imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, but after wards restored, with one of Xi’s sister from his fathers first marriage potentially killing herself.

      • Fishroot [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        Does Xi label himself solely as that though?

        How Xi defines himself is a matter of how the party wants to mythologize the head of the state because that person represents the party. The reason why Xi and the other person who got sideswiped by the party in bizarre circumstances Bo Xilai, represent the ‘‘populists’’ within the party in contrast of the more elitists clique of the party defined by Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. The reason why the populist managed to win is because of there are rampant corruptions within the party especially with the aftermath of the Sichuan Earthquake. This is why both Xi jinping and Bo Xilai play on their backgrounds as some grassroot organizer and some pseudo red guard ideology respectfully because CPC wants a new image to represent the party.

        At the end of the day, it’s political theater and what matters for the people is really the policies

    • Wheaties [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      However, like most Chinese boomers, he hates the typical “Western political correctness” stuff and it shows in his novels, but they have been largely edited out in the English editions so you won’t really come across them if you read them in English.

      I remember there being a bit where a 21st century cryosicle is thawed out in a post-scarcity 2Xth century, goes “Damn, these dudes have long hair,” and then it’s never brought up again. Was this a whole plot thread that was cut?

    • Fishroot [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      if you want to know the author’s political position, check out his 2001 novella Full Spectrum Barrage Jamming

      The story does not really give a clear position on if the author support the USSR or any communist ideas. The tropes used describing the post-soviet state can be find in lightning balls too, but all the descriptions used are just normal talking point in Chinese mainstream media in the 90s as we watched USSR collapses, the Chechen Wars and the collapse of Yugoslavian state.

      It has more to do with nationalism than actual any ideas of progressivism.

      There is an interview on YouTube where the author gave an interview in the US about what he thought of Musk in which he said ''seeing there are still people like him gives him hope for humanity." There were also some statements about the nihilism and the hopelessness of his book in which basically saying there is no stopping to the mechanism of the world, progress. the fact that millions or billions of people have to die and we feel sad about it is just an opinion we express about reality which is inevitable.