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The Sacrificial Altar of Development: Critiquing Narratives of Developmentalism in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction
(2022) Field, Gemma; Twidle, Hedley
Since its inception, sf in China has served dual critical and didactic purposes. On the one hand to spread modernism and scientific education whilst entrenching Chinese nationalism with visions of technological miracles and the inevitable rise of China as a global power. On the other hand, it has always served as a medium of criticism against the Chinese state and Confucian values. As China is the world's fastest growing economy, it is inevitable that issues of uneven development and the problematic of development play out in the Chinese public forum. Given the pervasive degree of government intervention in everyday life, normal channels of communication are obstructed or monitored. Thus, sf provides an ideal medium for such a discussion. Moreover, in the context of modern China, where any critique of the one-party state is required to walk a teetering tightrope to avoid censorship, sf's outlandish stories and settings allow it to pass state censorship when realist critiques would not. With its focus on investigating the possible consequences of technological and social development via fantastic and estranging means, sf's enduring popularity and inherent political entropy in the Chinese context speaks to the Chinese people's concern with and refiguration of those issues.