China 2185
1989 cyberpunk novel by Liu Cixin
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China 2185 (Chinese: 中国2185) is a 1989 science fiction novel released by author Liu Cixin. The novel portrays how the digital reanimation technology triggers a cybernetic uprising in a future China. Its themes both critique liberal democracy and cultural conservativism. As a result of the novel, Liu developed a reputation as China's first author in the cyberpunk genre.
Plot synopsis
The novel portrays how the advancement of digital reanimation triggers a cybernetic uprising in a future China.[1]: 507 In China 2185, the world is a triarchy balanced between the Soviet Union, China, and the United States. The country is a perfect democracy led by a directly elected 29-year-old president whose electoral popularity is significantly driven by her charisma and public image over intellectual or political merit. However, her youthful image and radical, progressive policies face vehement backlash from the extremely aged populace, with hundreds of millions of elderly two-century-old people who are kept alive through hyperadvanced medical technology. With young and capable people a minority among the already boggling population, the president is confronted with the dual and opposing problems of overpopulation and an aging populace.
In the story, a hacker only known as M102 by the ID the security system assigns him, infiltrates Chairman Mao Memorial Hall and uses holographic simulation software to scan the brain of Chairman Mao. It is revealed he has scanned the brains of five normal, recently deceased civilians before. These are the first such attempts at such a high fidelity scan of the human brain.[1]: 507 The scanned people are then recreated in cyberspace as digital programs, codenamed Brains 1 through 6 (Mao being the 6th).[1]: 507
The president faces a difficult divorce case, and her appearance in the courtroom and the outcome of the trial - losing rights to her daughter - devastates her but boosts her popularity among the young. However, her perceived slight against the nuclear family and by extention, traditional culture, gets her assaulted by an extremely old person as she makes her way back through Beijing. Later, she visits the home of a child estranged from his aged and repressive family she befriended earlier and tries to talk him out of his woes with dozens of immobile, paralyzed ancestors occupying and taking up his family's resources and his parents' attention. She shows him to her presidential office and has him approve several minor decisions to amuse him. Here she learns of the resurrections of Brains 1 through 6 by M102 and immediately classifies this information to an extreme degree. The child, part of a group of tens of thousands of children who take to the skies at night illicitly on flying motorbikes to vent their dissatisfaction at the ineptitude and domination of the old, flies with the president anonymously afterward. The president pours out her frustration at the hyper-conservative, aged part of the populace.
After the president and the child shares dinner at her home, a PLA major, her personal bodyguard, fetches her to a secret base codenamed "Anti-Quake Center 1", disguised as a weather station and serves as a command center in case an attack or fault disables or damages the advanced, omnipresent software infrastructure much of the country's crucial infrastructure and industrial base relies on. The Brains 1 through 6 programs are fed into a supercomputer and analyzed by several groups of experts. The president, realizing the potential of such technology, calls an emergency meeting with the most important members of her cabinet. They decide to announce this breakthrough to the country at a National People's Meeting, a virtual conference where every citizen is capable of participating personally thanks to extremely advanced computing technology of 2185.
At the conference, the people are euphoric at the prospect of effective immortality. However, they are outraged after learning of the virtual incarceration of the Brains in the Quake-center supercomputer. By majority vote, the brains are granted access to the entire network of the country. They promise not to cause sabotage and intentional damage.
However, it is revealed Brain 2 is deeply dissatisfied at the country's progressiveness, and committed suicide due to outrage at the newer, unconventional formats of the nuclear family present in the 22nd century. Brain 2 begins to clone himself trillions of times, appearing as "electric pulse beings".[1]: 507 These digital clones regard the China they encounter as having turned towards revisionism.[1]: 507 They deem China as overcome with crass materialism and degeneracy.[1]: 515 The digital clones occupy the central computer and establish a cyber government named The Republic of Huaxia (an archaic, traditional name for China).[1]: 507 They hijack China's internet-based security system to censor behaviors they deem deviant, including by destroying neon lights, removing bikini advertisements, and shutting down night clubs.[1]: 515 The digital clones broadcast information on sexual morality, work ethics, and traditional modes of living. They violently oppress the populace.[1]: 515 Brain 2's clones are called "Software Nukes" by the cyberspace forces of China, owing to their human intelligence that allows them to attack and destroy practically every kind of conceivable programming. China shuts down its connections to the outside world. All contact is capitally forbidden and any vessel, even civilian, attempting to enter or leave China is mercilessly destroyed by the PLA.
The UNSC activates an "Armageddon" protocol, owing to the unlimited destructive potential these trillions of omnipotent and malevolent beings could have on the wider world should they proliferate to other nations' network systems. The USSR is tasked with the nuclear "disinfection" of China should the threat not be eliminated within two hours, giving China until 23:48 until the nuclear weapons arrive. The US and European forces manoeuvre their space and sea-based forces to encroach and lock down China. The General Secretary of the Soviet Union is torn as his daughter is in China on a school visit yet orders the launch silos to be readied. China begins evacuation of its population into nuclear shelters, but due to insufficient capacity, elders are not admitted.
The clones of Brain 2 seize control of all digitally controlled machinery, including armed police cars and weaponized army vehicles. They press an attack on the Hall the president is in an attempt to kill her to stop her from activating the "Bottle's Cork" system that could cause the entire country's networks to undergo a forcible power cycle and wipe out the beings. As the situation seems hopeless and more and more of the defenders of the People's Hall are killed by the weapons the beings wield, the children and their flying motorbikes arrive and get the president to the emergency Quake-center with only a few minutes before the due time for nuclear destruction.
Ultimately, China's political leader shuts down the national power system to eliminate the Republic of Huaxia. The power cycle destroys many industrial systems and cause a great loss of life, but the country is preserved. The president orders China's SSBNs to fire missiles without warheads at the Pacific Ocean to demonstrate China's nuclear capability should any other power still attempt to attack China.[1]: 507 The leader engages the digital Mao, Brain 6, in conversation, and finds the original clone to be earthly, earnest, and visionary (albeit a little amused at Brain 2's actions). She's surprised that it wasn't Mao, but a normal old man that tried to destroy the country.[1]: 515 Mao offers a frank assessment of his own revolutionary successes and failures.[1]: 515 He criticizes the preservation of his corpse as excessively superstitious but simultaneously observes that a cult of personality has always been a means to govern China in difficult times.[1]: 515 The story ends with digital Mao's admonition that any attempt at immortality is futile because "eternal life is just eternal death". The presidents of China and the USSR engage in jovial conversation about a virtual reality to relegate the hyper-aged people to, to solve both problems of overpopulation and the aging populace. [1]: 507
Themes
The novel critiques extreme conservatism of the sort shown by the Republic of Huaxia.[1]: 515 Through its permissiveness and concepts of universal rights, the democratic China of the novel triggers a violent cyber uprising that nearly leads to its destruction.[1]: 515–516 Academic Hang Tu observes that these critiques presage the themes of Liu Cixin's later science fiction, which envisions a bleak universe dominated by "zero morality" and perpetual war between alien species in which the human race risks falling victim to its own moral consciousness.[1]: 516
Academic Li Hua writes that the culturally conservative aspects of The Republic of Huaxia's revolution caricatures the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign.[2] According to academic Hang Tu, this conservative revolt portrays an "ossified and archaic mentality rooted in arrogance and intransigence."[1]: 515
Academic Mingwei Song observes that the digital Mao portrayed in China 2185 appears to be at peace with his own "farewell to revolution".[1]: 515