Science Fiction As Cultural Soft Power

Over the last several months, I've been listening to a lot of stories.  I have also listened to the reasons which authors give for wanting to tell a story, for wanting to become skilled at creating and delivering a story.  Why create stories?  I have become interested in the benefits which are experienced by the writers, and to me the most interesting of those benefits are not monetary.  Such benefits include the learning of strategic thinking through storytelling, learning to discover and explore the various possibilities in a possibility space, and learning to foresee the various ways people may react to a set of possibilities, as well as the motives for those reactions.  A writer who applies himself to sharpening his skill also gains the ability to craft his own narrative, thus taking control of his own narrative and preserving himself and his narrative from the voices of others who want to slander the writer and his people through their own narrative.  Learning to craft a good story aids the writer's projection of his own narrative into the world.  By this projection, the author creates a bridge between human beings.  I have come to believe that speculative fiction - particularly, science fiction - has unique advantages as a means of exploring possibilities of situations, and of the possible human reactions (and their motives) to those situational possibilities.  It also has unique advantages as a vehicle for human narratives.

These conclusions of mine have been formed by my introduction over the last year to Chinese science fiction.  That introduction came in a way that would make sense to most of us who have had to live through the last year as citizens of the United States.  It all started with the restrictions on life and movement which reality forced on us through the COVID-19 pandemic.  Being cut off from much in-person contact with others meant that I was to a large degree cut off from cognitive stimulation from other minds.  I engaged in a bit of binge-watching YouTube, but always felt terrible about the amount of time that thus got wasted.  And I'm not a Netflix kind of guy.  But I was open to listening to audiobooks, since I could work out, wash dishes, mow the lawn, etc. while listening.  So I turned to Librivox.  But most of the fiction on Librivox is characterized by the sort of triumphalist point of view common to 19th century authors who came from the "dominant culture", the point of view that people and communities of color find to be intensely annoying because it sings the praises of our oppressors.   I got very quickly tired of trying to listen to that trash.  However, Librivox did not seem to have very many audiobooks whose texts had been written by non-Western, nonwhite authors.  So I began searching for modern stories written by people from non-European cultures.  And I decided to stop being a cheapskate and to become willing to pay to buy recordings of such stories.  Thus I went to an indie audiobook site and discovered Liu Cixin.  I got hooked!    

I discovered that Liu Cixin's works of fiction were part of a massive display of burgeoning Chinese (and Asian) cultural soft power.  Liu is part of what is called a "new wave" of Chinese science fiction.  Other writers in this new wave include Ken Liu, Hao Jingfang, Xia Jia, Chen Qiufan, and Chen Chuncheng, to name a few.  These authors share some key common characteristics: all are quite educated.  All are able to think deeply, to explore deeply a space of possibilities and the possible human reactions to those possibilities.  All are able to write their explorations from a refreshingly non-Western perspective.  All are good, strong, entertaining writers!  Examples which struck me:

• Liu Cixin: The Three-Body trilogy (English title: Remembrance of Earth's Past) is his most famous work.  It was this trilogy that hooked me.  The trilogy concerns the social and technological challenges faced by humanity under the threat of an invasion from alien creatures who are as far advanced above us as a modern First-World nation is above a pack of monkeys.  (Two memorable quotes from the first book: "消灭人类暴政!" "世界属于三体!", and " 不要回答! 不要回答!! 不要回答!!!")  Liu has been compared to Arthur C. Clarke, but in my opinion he is much, much better.  For one thing, his characters are fully fleshed and deeply complex.  For those who have read the books, think of Ye Wenjie, of Luo Ji, of Cheng Xin, of the unforeseen effects of the psychic injury suffered by someone who is deeply violated by the people of her own country.  One other note: It has been reported that Netflix is in the process of screwing up (Oops!  I mean, "creating a movie adaptation of") Three Body, and that their adaptation may be released this year.  I hope that Chinese filmmakers create their own version as well.  Even though I do not speak Chinese, I think I will enjoy the Chinese version much better.

• Hao Jingfang: Ms. Hao is the author of a number of stories.  One of those stories, "Folding Beijing," is a commentary on the effects of inequality and of unequal distribution of privilege in a society.  The other, a novel titled Vagabonds, is a story about a group of kids from Mars who, as a result of a five-year stay on Earth as teenagers, become "Third Culture Kids" who are able to see the flaws in both the hyper-capitalist world of Earth and the stifling central planning of the Martian society.  This leads to conflicts which the kids must navigate.

• Chen Qiufan: Mr. Chen, who goes by the name Stanley Chan when outside China, is the author of Waste Tide, a novel which explores the ways in which even seemingly homogeneous societies create caste systems so that a small number of privileged people can benefit from the dirty work done by those without privilege.  In this case, the dirty work consists of the hand-intensive labor needed to support a low-cost e-waste recycling business and its resulting economy.

• Ken Liu: Mr. Liu is an American citizen of Chinese ancestry.  I got to listen to the audiobook version of his short story collection titled The Paper Menagerie.  Some of the stories that stood out to me concern a social media company that takes over the lives of everyone on earth, a "generation ship" traveling to another star and the heroic choice that saves it, and the consequences to a society that refuses to acknowledge its historical guilt for past injustices.

• Chen Chuncheng: Mr. Chen is the author of a number of short stories.  I read one of these yesterday between cleaning the house and fixing my backyard fence.  The story was titled, "A Cloudcutter's Diary".  I won't tell any more about it except to say that it was a trip!

Let us consider what has been accomplished by these writers and their narratives.  One of their accomplishments has been to refute the white supremacist narrative pushed by Trumpoids such as Fox News that tries to dehumanize the Chinese as monsters and that tries to depict Chinese society as some sort of monolithic monstrosity.  This refutation has been accomplished by telling deeply human stories about complex, deeply human Chinese characters.  (Think again of Ye Wenjie, for instance.)  These authors have presented the Chinese narrative in a compelling manner and from multiple perspectives.  They have also offered trenchant critique of many social and political systems (including their own!)  Their stories have begun to build a bridge between ordinary Westerners and ordinary Chinese people.  They have also provoked their readers into a more rigorous exploration of spaces of possibilities, which is a hallmark of good speculative fiction.  And very importantly, by their own example they have shown other historically marginalized nonwhite populations a path forward to personal and collective liberation by developing technical and scientific expertise in order to create beautifully good work.  Liu Cixin's characters in particular move me to regret every minute of my youth which was wasted in watching cartoons on TV instead of studying technically challenging subjects.  

Chinese SF writers are an example of what Asef Bayat describes as "the art of presence" in Life As Politics: the kind of excellence of work that forces a change in the narrative told against a historically marginalized people by a dominant society.  To quote:

"In this respect, I envision a strategy whereby every social group generates change in society through active citizenship in their immediate domains: children at home and at schools, students in colleges, teachers in classrooms, workers in factories, the poor in

their neighborhoods, athletes in stadiums, artists through their art, intellectuals through media, women at home and as public actors. Not only are they to voice their claims, broadcast violations done unto them, and make themselves heard, but also to take responsibility for excelling at what they do. An authoritarian regime should not be a reason for not producing excellent novels, brilliant handicrafts, math champions, world- class athletes, dedicated teachers, or a global film industry. Excellence is power; it is identity."

Note that when I read the word "authoritarian" this passage, I am not focusing primarily on the authoritarianism of China's current government under Xi Jinping, although that authoritarianism is something which we should definitely be concerned about.  I am rather focusing on the authoritarianism of the white supremacist Global Far Right which has had, among its ugliest manifestations, the United States under Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020 and Russia under Vladimir Putin. 

A surprising final note: consider the role of religion in the writings of these authors.  Reading them completely refutes the story we in the West have been told that China is rigidly and rigorously atheist, and that the Chinese government forbids any kind of religious expression.  The reality is not nearly as black-and-white.  It should rather be said that many Chinese are becoming open to spiritual explorations.  However, the white evangelical churches of the West should not construe this as "the opening of a missionary door" for the white evangelical message, but should take a good look at themselves to ask why on earth any reasonable person would want to listen to them, or believe in the sort of "jesus" they preach.  More on that in a future post.