First two points is bit of an exaggeration, this was back in the 2000s so Tiananmen square was still fresh in the mind of someone as old as Brooks and before the economic liberalization petered out to the rest of the world so China was still a very mysterious place to the rest of the world—
The book was written in 2005, not 1805. I was an American in 2005, so trust me when I say: China wasn't a mysterious oriental realm to Americans. It was an enemy, or at best a potential rival.
When pundits wanted to make people care about the deficit, they talked about all the money "we" owed to CHINA, even though most government debt was owed to other Americans (or even other branches of government) and China didn't even have a majority of foreign-owned debt. The fear of China being able to leverage that debt to influence the USA was terrifying.
People talked about Chinese communist totalitarianism, sometimes referencing actual human rights abuses, but just as often talking about the state-run aspects of their economy or weird cultural differences or wholly fictitious claims about China. It's a superstitious place, and a godless one, and a dictatorship, and communist, and advanced, and savage, and worst of all, a potential rival to US hegemony. Every effort to exert soft power on the global stage was viewed with open suspicion or hostility, even when they were just providing foreign aid like any other country. It's evil because China's doing it, and we don't want China's influence to spread!
At best, this China was being used as a foil to America, a mirror to examine American values. They're all collectivist, we're individualist; they're communist, we're libertarian. At worst, it was used as a fearmongering tool. Loads of sci-fi stories (mostly but not entirely cyberpunk) included increasing Chinese influence as a sign of how dystopic things were getting.
There were also a surprising number of stories where China being more magical than the West was just taken for granted. I can remember two separate cartoons from my childhood about a struggle between the good-guy team and the bad-guy team to control a set of magical Chinese artifacts, and while that's not a lot, I'm pretty sure there are other examples I don't remember (which probably don't fit that narrow description as well as
Xiaolin Showdown or
Jackie Chan Adventures).
Anyways, China was well-known to Americans. But it was known as a threat, and while many of the things known about China were not actually accurate, there isn't really an excuse for that ignorance beyond "everyone was saying this kind of shit". It's hard to blame any individual when there's so much sinophobia flying around, but as a collective? We should have known better, even in 2005.
The more things change the more they stay the same, amirite?
I also just want to talk about how both nations started the war with similar outdated ideologies, but in the US was able to replace those Yonkers generals with a more transparent military system while China was stuck with the 'crotchety old f*cks' in the politburo, hence needing violent action to do what the US could do in peaceful fashion.
And it doesn't strike you as suspect that, in a novel where Israel and Palestine non-problematically put aside their differences and Cuba embraces capitalism to survive, it's China that sticks to the old ways and continues to fuck with the rest of the world?
Chinese Taikonauts are picked for their loyalty to the party, in China people tried to stab Japanese children on the street because of the rhetoric the party has been putting out, is it really that much of a stretch to believe the CCP could find people in a population of 1.4 billion to do this? Also delayed fuses are a thing.
Is it a stretch to believe that the CCP could find people who were willing to throw their lives away to follow an order that doesn't help anyone? One that is not only bad for humanity at large, but also for China in specific and the person throwing the trigger even more specifically?
Many people are willing to throw their lives away for some cause they believe in, but very few are willing to do so if their sacrifice will not actually benefit that cause. People will run into the deadly melee to win a battle, but they will flee when they realize the battle is lost.
There might be people so blind or obedient that, even when the stakes are impossibly high on all sides, they will follow orders to kill themselves and fuck everyone up for no reason. But I don't think it's possible to know whether any given person is that kind of person until they've actually faced such impossibly high stakes.
Also: Taikonauts are not actually chosen for loyalty above all else! They are chosen, first and foremost, for completing the necessary training to operate spacecraft without dying, followed by meeting health requirements to live in space without dying. The pool of potential taikonauts is
much smaller than 1.4 billion.
Arguing that Chinese people are fungible, that any Chinese citizen could be chosen to perform whatever job is required of them, is kinda fuckin' racist!
In case you don't believe me,
have a citation. Though I hope I don't need a citation for "Chinese astronauts need as much training as American ones"...
I think part of the reason I liked this books portrayal is that it was one of the first books I read openly critical of the PRC, since I grew up in a time where Hollywood and media in general was trying to get the Chinese audience to watch their movies and read their books in not so subtle ways, so this was a bit more refreshing.
A 4chan rant about Chinese immigrants stealing jobs and eating babies fits this rubric.
Raise your standards.
You deserve better
what?
You say you liked WWZ for being openly critical of the PRC.
I pointed out that that's a horribly low bar; it applies even if the media in question is telling obvious lies and advancing openly racist causes.
You deserve better than World War Z. You deserve stories that are critical of the PRC and also accurate, stories which criticize it for the things it actually does and not shit the author heard from Glen Beck (or I guess Alex Jones, these days).
Raise your standards.
