Varieties of the Utopian in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction

UC Berkeley's Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk with Mingwei Song from the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures of Wellesley College on contemporary Chinese science fiction.

Speaker: Mingwei Song, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Wellesley College

In 2066, China dominates the world as the sole superpower. A team of go players are sent to the poverty-stricken United States to show off China’s cultural superiority. Thus begins the story of Han Song’s 2066: Mars over America (2000), which, together with numerous other new wave science fiction novels appearing in China over the last decade, has strengthened as well as complicated the utopian vision for a new, powerful China. Deeply entangled with the politics of a changing China, science fiction today mingles nationalism with utopianism/dystopianism; sharpens social criticism with an acute awareness of China’s potential for further reform as well as its limitations; and envelops political consciousness in discourses on the power or powers of technology. This presentation analyzes the variations of the utopian motif in the major works of the three most influential SF authors, whom the speaker names as China’s “Big Three”: Liu Cixin (b. 1963), Wang Jinkang (b. 1948) and Han Song (b. 1965). The speaker's discussion focuses on three themes: (1) the appropriation of Mao’s heritage in the narrative of China’s future; (2) the myth of development; and (3) the uncertainty of a technologized post-human world.