The Artificial World Model of “Chinese SF” Criticism: A Reflection on the State of the Field by Means of Hao Jingfang's Fiction

Situated at the intersection of science fiction (SF) studies and Chinese studies, and more broadly of genre studies and area studies, this essay takes the work of contemporary Chinese SF writer Hao Jingfang as a starting point to address what the article's author considers a palpable disconnect in the contemporary reception and study of SF from the People's Republic of China (PRC). This disconnect, which has roots in the positionality of Chinese studies experts vis-à-vis the academic institutions and the field of studies in which they operate, has come to limit and regiment most discourses around the cultural phenomenon of “Chinese SF,” crystallized as it has become into fixed forms of descriptive praise and occasional critique that do not really attend to the political affordances of this genre. Ultimately, the goal of this intervention is to hold both “Chinese SF” and its scholarship up to the standards of literary representation to which they themselves so often appeal. If it is true that “China's reality is more science-fictional than SF” and that “SF is a type of critical realism,” then what must be thoroughly investigated is the linkage between this genre and the reality it lays claims on.