The Chinese Dream in Internet Novels: Creative Destruction of State Legitimacy

• In Event: Nationalist Politics in Asia

Abstract

Attracting approximately 53 percent (or 455 million) of China’s 854 million Internet users as of June 2019, Internet novels constitute an important yet understudied realm of digital life in the authoritarian regime. This paper examines alter-history fictions, a popular genre of Internet novels that often involve time-traveling in history to save China, to probe the intriguing relationship between such digital consumerist-cultural experiences and authoritarian politics. It finds that the production and consumption of such writings embody a process of “creative destruction” of state legitimacy, which though oftentimes contests official discourse and exemplifies pluralization of online expression, ultimately helps reinvigorate support for authoritarian rule by provoking pro-regime nationalism. More specifically, by allowing citizens to creatively mingle their personal ambitions such as pursuit of power and luxury life with the official discourse of national revival, such writings create a popular “Making China Great Again” discourse that retells, reinterprets, and reaffirms the Party-state’s rhetoric of “Chinese dream,” making the latter more relatable to and thus more popular among the general public.

Author

• Rongbin Han, University of Georgia