China 2185
China 2185 is a 1989 science fiction novel released by author Liu Cixin. The novel portrays how the digital reanimation of Mao Zedong 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 digital reanimation of Mao Zedong triggers a cybernetic uprising in a future China. In China 2185, the country is a democracy led by a directly elected 29-year old president whose electoral popularity is significantly driven by his charisma and public image rather than any intellectual or political merit; he mechanistically reproduces the mass will and has to respond to citizen calls 24 hours a day. Policy decisions are handled through direct vote without the mediation of committees or representatives.In the story, a hacker infiltrates Chairman Mao Memorial Hall and uses holographic simulation software to scan Mao's brain and the brains of five other deceased Communist Party elders. Mao and the Party elders are then recreated in cyberspace as digital avatars. Their cyber resurrection creates a political crisis in China. The Chinese public is thrilled with the prospect of immortality. The digital avatars are held in a cyberspace prison at first, but this angers the public who demand that they be released and given the same rights as any other Chinese citizen.
Additional digital clones of Mao begin appearing as "electric pulse beings". These digital clones regard the China they encounter as having turned towards revisionism. They deem China as overcome with crass materialism and degeneracy. The Mao digital clones destroy the Central Firework System and establish a cyber government named The Republic of Huaxia. 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. The digital clones broadcast information on sexual morality, work ethics, and traditional modes of living.
Ultimately, China's political leader shuts down the national power system to eliminate the Republic of Huaxia. The leader engages the original Mao digital clone in conversation, and finds the original clone to be earthly, earnest, and visionary. The original Mao clone offers a frank assessment of Mao's own revolutionary successes and failures. 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. The story ends with digital Mao's admonition that any attempt at immortality is futile because "immortality is mortality".
Themes
The novel critiques both liberal democracy and the conservatism of the sort shown by the Republic of Huaxia. 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. 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.Academic Li Hua writes that the culturally conservative aspects of The Republic of Huaxia's revolution caricatures the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign. According to academic Hang Tu, this conservative revolt portrays an "ossified and archaic mentality rooted in arrogance and intransigence."
Academic Mingwei Song observes that the digital Mao portrayed in China 2185 appears to be at peace with his own "farewell to revolution".