China 2185
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| Author | Liu Cixin |
|---|---|
| Original title | 中国2185 |
| Language | Chinese |
| Genre | Cyberpunk |
| Set in | China in 2185 |
Publication date | 1989 |
| Publication place | China |
| Media type | Online |
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 critique liberal democracy, gerontocracy, 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.[2]: 507 The narrative focuses on the formation of a cyberspace-based culturally conservative republic which seeks to prove the superiority of national culture by turning Chinese culture into a computer code.[1]: 184 This effort brings China to brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.[1]: 184
In China 2185, the world is a triarchy balanced between the Soviet Union, China, and the United States. China is presented as highly successful, having achieved the "world's first complete information society", which transitioned to nuclear power and renewable energy, and greened the Loess Plateau.[1]: 187 The renminbi is the dominant global currency and China's northwest has become the largest software producer in the world.[1]: 187
The country is led by a woman referred to in the text as "the highest magistrate".[1]: 187 A directly elected 29-year-old president figure, she presides over a perfect democracy. Her electoral popularity is significantly driven by her charisma and public image over intellectual or political merit.[2]: 507
A core problem in the setting is the conflict between the old and young generations.[3]: 289 The extremely elderly population is capable of attaining nearly eternal life thanks to hyperadvanced medical science like artificial organs.[1]: 187 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. The novel presents the modern Chinese family as including seven generations living together in one home.[1]: 187 Framed as the "population problem," the overpopulation issue is primarily presented in the novel as a cultural, rather than economic, obstacle for China's development.[1]: 187 The young feel stifled at home, forming flying motorcycle gangs to ride at night; the elderly believe that the young are betraying China's traditional values and are irritated when the highest magistrate revises China's marriage laws.[3]: 529
A computer engineer known as M102, infiltrates Chairman Mao Memorial Hall and uses holographic simulation software to scan the brain of Mao Zedong.[3]: 524 He has also scanned the brains of five other dead men.[3]: 524 These are the first such attempts at such a high fidelity scan of the human brain.[2]: 507 The scanned people are then recreated in cyberspace as digital programs.[2]: 507 They are codenamed Brains 1 through 6 (Mao being the 6th).[1]: 188
The Brains 1 through 6 programs are fed into a supercomputer and analyzed by several groups of experts. The Brains protest being constrained to a secure network and demand full recognition as Chinese citizens.[1]: 188
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.
It is revealed Brain 2 was a 185 year old man who was deeply dissatisfied at the country's progressiveness, and killed himself after an argument with his great-grandson.[3]: 531 Brain 2 begins to clone himself to create "electric pulse beings".[1]: 188 These digital clones regard the China they encounter as having turned towards revisionism.[2]: 507 They deem China as overcome with crass materialism and degeneracy.[2]: 515 The digital clones occupy the central computer and establish a cyber government named The Republic of Huaxia (a traditional name for China which conveys Chineseness in an ethnic, rather than territorial sense).[2]: 507 [1]: 188 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.[2]: 515 The digital clones broadcast information on sexual morality, work ethics, and traditional modes of living. They violently oppress the populace.[2]: 515 The Republic of Huaxia seeks to instigate nuclear war with the Soviet Union.[1]: 188
The clones of Brain 2 seize control of all digitally controlled systems.[1]: 188 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. The children and their flying motorbikes arrive, break the siege, and escort the highest magistrate to a secret base.[3]: 529
Ultimately, China's political leader shuts down the national power system to eliminate the Republic of Huaxia.[1]: 188 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. The leader engages the digital Mao, Brain 6, in conversation, and finds the original clone to be earthly, earnest, and visionary,[2]: 515 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. Mao offers a frank assessment of his own revolutionary successes and failures.[2]: 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.[2]: 515 Mao admonishes that any attempt at immortality is futile because "eternal life is just eternal death".[2]: 507
The digital pulse beings record their history in a letter to China's leader, and the letter survives the unplugging of the network.[1]: 189 It describes a process by which after obtaining access to the general network, the combination of unlimited access to information and computing power, viral replication, and fanaticism gave rise to the development of the Republic of Huaxia as a totalitarian state.[1]: 189 The digital pulse beings use their time before the unplugging of the network takes effect to prepare a digital model of China's culture, which they assert will "guarantee the survival of our culture and be as eternal as the Sun."[1]: 189
China's leader decides that a new "general computer network" should be built, but that it should no longer be accessible to everyone.[1]: 188
Themes
China 2185 uses the plot element of Mao Zedong's computerized brain as a mechanism to examine how digital technologies will affect China's geopolitical status.[1]: 184
The novel critiques extreme conservatism of the sort shown by the Republic of Huaxia.[2]: 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.[2]: 515–516 It depicts the political ideal of universal suffrage failing when confronted by a technologically limitless gerontocracy.[1]: 188
Academic Hang Tu observes that novel's critiques of universal rights 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.[2]: 516 Academic Li Hua writes that the culturally conservative aspects of The Republic of Huaxia's revolution caricatures the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign.[3]: 530 According to academic Hang Tu, this conservative revolt portrays an "ossified and archaic mentality rooted in arrogance and intransigence."[2]: 515
According to academic Jessica Imbach, the novel contrasts with other cyberpunk classics because it "focuses not so much on the Internet as a new physical realm, but rather as a new temporal condition that threatens to subsume China's quest for national rejuvenation (historically, a core concern of Chinese science fiction) under the domination of a stagnating and eternal present."[1]: 185
Written during a time when China had a one-child policy, a substantial amount of the novel deals with themes of how a drastically overaged population burdens China's youth and hinders its social development.[1]: 187
Academic Mingwei Song observes that the digital Mao portrayed in China 2185 appears to be at peace with his own "farewell to revolution".[2]: 515
Impact
The release of the novel resulted in Liu Cixin developing a reputation as China's first cyberpunk author.[4][1]: 183 It formed an important part of the "new wave" in Chinese science fiction.[2]: 514