The Chung Kuo series of novels is set in a far future world very different
from our own, one where China has conquered the world.
We see that non-Han people still survive, but as minorities in their former
homelands.
This is the sort of book that can be criticized, at least by the more
casual reader, as being depressing. It doesn't wrap things up nicely
with a happy ending at the end of the first book, or the second.

And it's hard to see how the books could ever progress to a happy
ending, particularly if you define a happy ending as:
The world is returned to a normal state, where the proportion of its
agricultural productivity devoted to the maintenance of each individual
ethnic group is restored to its valule as of Epoch 1850.0.
So the Han Chinese are all back in China, because all of France
is for the French (well, it's actually divided between Frenchmen, Bretagnes,
Occitans and Basques), all of Ukraine is for the Ukrainians, all of
Tibet is for the Tibetans, and so on and so forth.
And this is all achieved in a humane and ethical fashion, once the
power of the Han hegemony has been broken, and the world returned
to the enlightened and civilized rule of Western Civilization.

Many here in this newsgroup will, of course, see a problem here.
Just because the non-Han peoples in the world of Chung Kuo
have been pushed off of their homelands... doesn't give them the
right to go and take it all back, if the only way they can do so is
through committing genocide.
And just how else could they do so?

Obviously, this kind of a book is needed, because of current
events. Suppose things go badly in Ukraine; Russia ends up driving
out the Ukrainian people from their homeland because they have
nowhere to take shelter and no way to grow food, and so the
Ukrainian nation lives on only in a diaspora, like the Jewish people
after 79 AD or thereabouts.
After all, Russian nuclear weapons mean that their aggression against
Ukraine can't be stopped by overwhelming force, and Russia has not
yet brought all the conventional force against Ukraine that it is potentially
capable of doing.

So what if the Ukrainian diaspora has to wait to retake the Ukraine as long
as the Jewish people had to wait for the state of Israel?

John Savard

On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 07:18:52 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca>
wrote:

>The Chung Kuo series of novels is set in a far future world very different
>from our own, one where China has conquered the world.
>We see that non-Han people still survive, but as minorities in their former
>homelands.
>This is the sort of book that can be criticized, at least by the more
>casual reader, as being depressing. It doesn't wrap things up nicely
>with a happy ending at the end of the first book, or the second.
>
>And it's hard to see how the books could ever progress to a happy
>ending, particularly if you define a happy ending as:
>The world is returned to a normal state, where the proportion of its
>agricultural productivity devoted to the maintenance of each individual
>ethnic group is restored to its valule as of Epoch 1850.0.
>So the Han Chinese are all back in China, because all of France
>is for the French (well, it's actually divided between Frenchmen, Bretagnes,
>Occitans and Basques), all of Ukraine is for the Ukrainians, all of
>Tibet is for the Tibetans, and so on and so forth.
>And this is all achieved in a humane and ethical fashion, once the
>power of the Han hegemony has been broken, and the world returned
>to the enlightened and civilized rule of Western Civilization.
>
>Many here in this newsgroup will, of course, see a problem here.
>Just because the non-Han peoples in the world of Chung Kuo
>have been pushed off of their homelands... doesn't give them the
>right to go and take it all back, if the only way they can do so is
>through committing genocide.
>And just how else could they do so?
>
>Obviously, this kind of a book is needed, because of current
>events. Suppose things go badly in Ukraine; Russia ends up driving
>out the Ukrainian people from their homeland because they have
>nowhere to take shelter and no way to grow food, and so the
>Ukrainian nation lives on only in a diaspora, like the Jewish people
>after 79 AD or thereabouts.
>After all, Russian nuclear weapons mean that their aggression against
>Ukraine can't be stopped by overwhelming force, and Russia has not
>yet brought all the conventional force against Ukraine that it is potentially
>capable of doing.

And it can't because it has the little problem of a 2500 mile border
with China, which contrary to popular belief is not its friend.

Not to mention that it's been at war with Japan for over 75 years. And
while the Japanese have officially renounced war, I suspect that that
one is grandfathered.

>So what if the Ukrainian diaspora has to wait to retake the Ukraine as long
>as the Jewish people had to wait for the state of Israel?
>
>John Savard

On Wednesday, April 6, 2022 at 3:18:55 PM UTC+1, Quadibloc wrote:
> The Chung Kuo series of novels is set in a far future world very different
> from our own, one where China has conquered the world.
> We see that non-Han people still survive, but as minorities in their former
> homelands.
> This is the sort of book that can be criticized, at least by the more
> casual reader, as being depressing. It doesn't wrap things up nicely
> with a happy ending at the end of the first book, or the second.
>
> And it's hard to see how the books could ever progress to a happy
> ending, particularly if you define a happy ending as:
> The world is returned to a normal state, where the proportion of its
> agricultural productivity devoted to the maintenance of each individual
> ethnic group is restored to its valule as of Epoch 1850.0.
> So the Han Chinese are all back in China, because all of France
> is for the French (well, it's actually divided between Frenchmen, Bretagnes,
> Occitans and Basques), all of Ukraine is for the Ukrainians, all of
> Tibet is for the Tibetans, and so on and so forth.
> And this is all achieved in a humane and ethical fashion, once the
> power of the Han hegemony has been broken, and the world returned
> to the enlightened and civilized rule of Western Civilization.
>
> Many here in this newsgroup will, of course, see a problem here.
> Just because the non-Han peoples in the world of Chung Kuo
> have been pushed off of their homelands... doesn't give them the
> right to go and take it all back, if the only way they can do so is
> through committing genocide.
> And just how else could they do so?
>
> Obviously, this kind of a book is needed, because of current
> events. Suppose things go badly in Ukraine; Russia ends up driving
> out the Ukrainian people from their homeland because they have
> nowhere to take shelter and no way to grow food, and so the
> Ukrainian nation lives on only in a diaspora, like the Jewish people
> after 79 AD or thereabouts.
> After all, Russian nuclear weapons mean that their aggression against
> Ukraine can't be stopped by overwhelming force, and Russia has not
> yet brought all the conventional force against Ukraine that it is potentially
> capable of doing.
>
> So what if the Ukrainian diaspora has to wait to retake the Ukraine as long
> as the Jewish people had to wait for the state of Israel?
>
> John Savard
I read one of the Chung Kuo books out of sequence a while ago and wasn't impressed. More recently I read the first book to see if reading in a logical order was better and found it depressing. As a feel-good conclusion I would take a western style democracy arising out of a totalitarian state, regardless of the locations of the descendants of present day nations.

At University I was warned against the "Whig Interpretation of History" and its heart of darkness, Macaulay's History of England..., which covers mostly William Of Orange and the founding of a constitutional monarchy after some pretty close brushes with tyranny. I find I really like it, and am currently listening to bits on Librivox - this might be a precedent for a feel-good democracy from tyranny. There might be scope for a "revolution done right" SF story based on the few cases where something like this has happened. The only example I can think of is If This Goes On/Revolt in 2100

I think that a Ukrainian diaspora in a western democracy for generations would mostly assimilate.

On 2022-04-06 8:18 a.m., Quadibloc wrote:
> The Chung Kuo series of novels is set in a far future world very different
> from our own, one where China has conquered the world.
> We see that non-Han people still survive, but as minorities in their former
> homelands.
> This is the sort of book that can be criticized, at least by the more
> casual reader, as being depressing. It doesn't wrap things up nicely
> with a happy ending at the end of the first book, or the second.
>
> And it's hard to see how the books could ever progress to a happy
> ending, particularly if you define a happy ending as:
> The world is returned to a normal state, where the proportion of its
> agricultural productivity devoted to the maintenance of each individual
> ethnic group is restored to its valule as of Epoch 1850.0.

Why the hell would I define that as a happy ending? The problem with
Chung Kuo is not that it has Han Chinese everywhere. It's that the
world is oppressed and stagnant.