But his all-time favorite is this one called Red Dawn (赤色黎明), a story in which the main character travels back to 1905 to start a communist revolution earlier than the actual one in Chinese history. The novel is a perfect example of how the genre usually fails to challenge China’s current political system, as the main character has essentially copied everything the Chinese Community Party has done historically and peacefully handed over power (though through democratic elections) to two characters who seem to roughly correspond to Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, the actual historical leaders of the party.
Government censorship is always in control of the online novel industry, from the moment a writer discusses a book idea with his or her editor to the moment readers comment on the novels online. Even Red Dawnwhich could be considered a work of propaganda, was ultimately removed from online platforms with cutting-edge content because discussions about political ideologies are often considered sensitive. However, this did not stop it from being made available on pirate websites, and it remains one of the most read novels of this genre.
“There are jokes among writers that the censorship machine is actually the ‘Time and Space Administration.’ The idea is that you can’t travel to a specific time, especially the first 30 years of PRC rule,” Han says.
MCGA vs. YOU
Calling these novels “Make China Great Again Fiction,” Han deliberately compares them to populist political movements in the West. What they have in common is that they are both nationalist narratives promoted by the government. Since Xi Jinping came to power, he has centered his political ideology around what he calls the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Han notes that these alternate history novels always reflect the dominant political narrative and are “not inherently subversive.” There is a whole subgenre of stories in which the main characters travel back in time, with the express purpose of helping the Communist Party in its early days. While some stories attempt to transport democratic parliamentary systems and elections to old China, they present these scenarios as hypothetical experiments rather than insinuations about state-of-the-art politics. By sticking to government messages about the nation’s history, Han argues that both authors and readers actively uphold state-mandated values.
However, there is a fundamental difference between MCGA and MAGA. In the case of MAGA and other populist political narratives in Europe, their supporters look back into history because they are dissatisfied with the current state of affairs, especially the consequences of globalization, so they fantasize that their countries hark back to earlier, more glorious times.
On the other hand, MCGA believers believe that China is great now and will remain great in the future. The country has emerged from globalization as a clear winner, so it wants to draw all the right lessons from the past in politics, trade and science to make China greater in the past as well. “Very few people think that ancient China was great, and we want today’s China to be more so. Rare, if not nonexistent,” Han says. “I haven’t met any.”