The era of globalization that followed the Cold War greatly transformed China. Yet many Western democracies witnessed backlash from those who held the view that international trade often came at the expense of lower-income segments of the population. Such frustrations found political expression in the “Make America Great Again” movement, a populist call for national renewal and the restoration of American power and global influence.
Across the Pacific, hundreds of millions of Chinese internet users consume a different form of “national rejuvenation” through popular online fiction. In Make China Great Again: Online Alt-History Fiction and Popular Authoritarianism, Professor Rongbin Han of the University of Georgia argues that this genre of alternative-history literature reflects “collective social desires and anxieties in Chinese society.” He further contends that it has become an effective vehicle that reinforces nationalism and the political legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
Rongbin Han is Professor of International Affairs at the University of Georgia. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2012. He is the author or co-author of Contesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience (Columbia University Press, 2018), Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies: How China Wins Online (Oxford University Press, 2023), and Make China Great Again: Online Alt-History Fiction and Popular Authoritarianism (Columbia University Press, 2026). He also co-edited The Xi Jinping Effect (University of Washington Press, 2024).
Alice Liu: Professor Han, you published Make China Great Again this March. Can you tell our readers what the book is about?
Rongbin Han: The book aims to explore the ideational world of contemporary Chinese people through the window of popular internet literature and its political implications. It focuses on a specific genre of internet literature, alt–history fiction, that involves traveling back in time to a historical period in China and saving the nation from various crises. I argue that through writing and consuming such novels, a process mediated by the state, market, and digital platforms, many Chinese citizens are effectively engaging and negotiating with the state regarding what an ideal China is. This process, in my mind, helps legitimize the party-state’s rule.
AL: And you argued that internet literature has become “a commodified political field.” Can you walk us through how various parties, namely the state, market, platforms, writers, and readers, each shape the field differently?
RH: I see internet literature as a field in which commodification and politics overlap. There are two fundamental logics underneath. It’s essentially a business and an industry. Readers choose the books they enjoy, and platforms and writers vie for their attention in the hope of revenue and profit.
But I also understand internet literature, more specifically, the Make China Great Again type of fiction I study, as a form of political expression. The party sets the bottom line in terms of what you can write and what you cannot write, how you can write about it, and what is acceptable. Censorship and promotion go hand in hand in the process.
AL: You just described how the state stipulates a permissible zone for web novels, as the state both censors and helps to promote them to a certain extent. Can you give us concrete examples of what each of those would look like?
RH: Censorship naturally comes into our minds when discussing the Chinese internet. Chinese netizens mock the Chinese authorities as the “time-space administration” (时空管理局), referring to the authorities’ attempt to control online expression. Alt-history fiction writers typically shy away from certain topics like the Tiananmen movement, and historical time periods like the first thirty years of the PRC, when the Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution, and the Great Leap Forward happened.
And then there is censorship of specific works. Some of the topics are okay to write about in general, but for some reason, you might get censored, even post hoc. One of my personal favorites is called Red Dome (赤色黎明). It’s about a Contemporary Chinese person traveling back to 1905 and launching a communist revolution before the CCP was ever founded. It’s a decidedly pro-communism fiction, basically replicating the Party’s history to the extent that some readers say it’s preaching communism. Surprisingly, that novel got censored because the Party was afraid that it would encourage political opposition under the guise of communism. Works involving religion sometimes get censored.
Another kind of censorship is routine censorship, such as keyword filtering. It includes politically or historically sensitive topics and adult-related content, such as “Guojun,” the Nationalist Army of the Republic of China.
But the state recognizes that control is sometimes not the most effective way. The state subtly nudges creators toward the kind of work they prefer. Writers are inducted into official organizations, such as the China Writers Association. Those associations are not purely civic organizations but are corporatist organizations affiliated with the state.
The state also tries to hold the platforms accountable. For instance, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television issued a document called Guiding Opinions Concerning Promoting the Healthy Development of Online Literature in 2015. Additionally, the party issues awards to fiction it likes, a recognition that writers aim for. By and large, those are the mechanisms that make writers comply with the political status quo.
AL: You call the Chinese state a co-producer rather than simply a censor, although censorship obviously plays a large part. I’m curious about what the state gains by allowing this online literary culture to develop instead of imposing outright control.
RH: To say that internet literature is a vibrant industry would be an understatement. It’s immensely influential; internet literature is the upstream sector of China’s pan-entertainment industries. A report shows that between 2018 and 2019, out of the top 100 most popular TV dramas and movies, 42 were adapted from web novels. So, the economic value is part of the story.
But more importantly, it encourages citizens to participate in the construction of state ideology: the Chinese Dream, a concept coined by President Xi Jinping. Because of popular participation, citizens may more willingly embrace the co-produced ideology, which allows the state to gain legitimacy without relying on coercive means and makes party rule more effective and less costly. For an authoritarian regime, that’s really ideal.
AL: You propose the concept of “pop hegemony.” How does that differ from Gramsci’s original idea of cultural hegemony?
RH: The concept of pop hegemony builds on Antonio Gramsci’s notion of “cultural hegemony,” where he argued that the ruling class achieves ideological dominance by socializing citizens with its beliefs, values, and mores through various institutions such as schools, churches, courts, and the media. But the term “pop” indicates how it is rooted in popular digital cultural consumerist experiences. The term also indicates how the process is popularly driven by citizens. All those Make China Great Again titles are produced by citizens themselves, not by the ruling elites. It’s almost entirely a market mechanism, even though the state sets the bottom line.
AL: You made a similar argument that readers go beyond mere consumers and also help shape the field. What made you say that?
RH: Readers in internet literature play the role of “prosumers.” I think it’s fair to say that readers play a fundamentally more active role in the digital age than in traditional publishing. Web novels are typically published regularly in installments, normally one, two, or three chapters per day to keep readers engaged. And readers read and comment on them as they are published, which provides instant feedback to writers. Of course, that doesn’t mean writers have to listen to readers, and readers don’t necessarily dictate plot changes. But it offers the opportunity to do that, and it indeed happens in those ways.
Readers on Qidian also tip writers, sometimes in incredibly large amounts.
One of my personal favorites, again, is The Morning Star of Lingao (Lingao Qiming, 临高启明). That novel is very unusual because it started with forum users brainstorming and writing the story together. And even now, average readers can write stories about it and contribute to the plot, whereas there is one person right now serving as the main editor and writer. That’s a very vivid example of how readers participate in the process. Put it this way: the boundary between readers and writers becomes highly blurred in this case. In fact, many writers were readers who were not satisfied with the novels they read and decided to write their own.
AL: In your fourth chapter, you’ve got quite a few interesting examples of how various authors and works of fiction have different versions of the Make China Great Again dream. Would you mind sharing a few of those stories?
RH: I argue there is an overall nationalist sentiment and a broad echoing of the official ideology of national revival, the Chinese Dream. That’s why I call them Make China Great Again fiction. They travel to all different periods, from the Qin Dynasty or even earlier periods to contemporary China. But the Ming Dynasty is by far the most popular. Out of the two hundred titles, fifty-two of them travel to the Ming Dynasty. Anti-Manchu sentiment is one reason.
Another reason is that the Ming was a critical historical moment in world history. The Ming Dynasty was the period when Europe really started transforming itself: global exploration, the discovery of the Americas, expanding trade, and eventually industrialization. For many contemporary Chinese, the Ming Dynasty sits at a crucial historical juncture, before which China was comfortably the “Middle Kingdom,” unchallenged by existing but not yet globally dominant Western European forces. But after that, the world fundamentally changed.
In the Ming Dynasty setting, characters compete globally with imperialist powers. I’ve seen novels where protagonists travel back to the Ming Dynasty and then compete with Europeans to colonize North America. It’s pretty wild. That desire for historical repair, to avoid the century of humiliation that befell China, heavily informs the plot lines.
AL: What are the similarities that you see between Make China Great Again and MAGA? And where do they diverge?
RH: China’s rise is related to China’s integration into the global trade and economic system, marked by reform and opening up. In contrast, the U.S. and a number of European countries see themselves as losing out in the process. In effect, they also benefited, but some sectors of the population see it otherwise and perceive themselves as victims of globalization. That’s the sentiment of a lot of MAGA people, who say that they don’t want foreigners or trade and advocate for decoupling and making America first. Americans think that the past was great, the current moment is bad, and to make everything great again, we need to return to the past.
That’s a different outlook from that of Make China Great Again. The Make China Great Again fiction writers and readers see China’s rise as imminent and destined. These works have been written and consumed since the late 1990s and early 2000s, an era broadly understood as the rise of China, an age of Chinese confidence. For contemporary Chinese, that creates a feeling that “we’re doing well now, and the future looks promising. The only major regrets seem to lie in history.” That’s why people travel back in time to fix history. It also dovetails with the state narrative of the East rising and the West declining.
In short, in the MAGA case, the population is not so optimistic about the future. Those are very important distinctions. Additionally, because China largely benefited from international trade, Make China Great Again fiction is not against globalization or international trade. As I said, I coded the works in terms of what transformations they made. The overwhelming majority of them would reform China economically in ancient times, try to introduce a commercial, if not entirely capitalist, economy. And most of them promote trade.
Now, the similarities, I think, are actually interesting. Both are about nationalism. But there is an element in Make China Great Again that echoes the populist element of MAGA. MAGA is inherently a populist, anti-establishment movement. And of course, the anti-establishment narrative is associated with anti-globalization because the establishment is the one that benefited from globalization, while others lost out in the process.
And in Make China Great Again fiction, even though people believe China benefited from the process, there is actually a sentiment of being pro-people. The number one keyword unique to comments on Make China Great Again fiction, compared to non-Make China Great Again fiction comments, was actually “butt” (屁股). Essentially, it’s about your political stance, which side you are sitting on, and where you put your butt. So basically, there are two elements. One is nationalistic: facing a confrontation between China and a foreign country, you must side with China, and if there’s a confrontation between the Han Chinese and a minority, you should take the Han Chinese side. That’s the national-ethnic element.
The other element is that you should side with the people. Make China Great Again novels overall demonstrate a level of communist nostalgia, which offers the Party some ideological and historical legitimacy. But it is also critical of the current regime because this tendency leads people to think that the Party has deviated from its communist roots, and that the state is captured by capitalists. They want the Party to return to its ideological roots. In this sense, the Communismnostalgia has an element that interestingly echoes Western populism.
AL: Tell us more about the Make China Great Again genre. What’s so special about it?
RH: As I said, Make China Great Again fiction is a specific genre of internet literature in China. I think it’s important to highlight that, according to CNNIC, there are over 500 million Chinese citizens who report themselves as users or consumers of internet literature. That’s about half of China’s internet population. That’s a huge thing in China, not so much in the United States.
I’m looking at time-traveling fiction that goes back into a historical time period and fixes China in one way or another, saving China from various crises. It’s a specific genre catering to a specific reader group. You can imagine the readership: typically Han Chinese, male, relatively young, and nationalistic.
The book also looks at what types of reforms they propose to save China. A student assistant and I coded the reforms they proposed. Apparently, a lot of those people see China’s problem as military. Gunpowder was invented in China, but it was not used to develop modern firearms, as they were developed in Europe. Writers tried to fix military discipline and military tactics in ancient China.
They try to develop China scientifically and technologically. That ranges from the invention of glass and soap to trade, funding their military, and ultimately launching a full-blown industrial revolution. The overwhelming majority of them talk about economic reforms, including introducing commercial economies, even capitalism. They discuss very specific institutions, such as introducing mechanisms for intellectual property rights protection and inventing a modern bank in lieu of traditional qianzhuang systems.
They also discuss political reforms, in the sense that some of them go back and try to launch a communist revolution. Some of them propose very limited reforms, like changing how officials are recruited in ancient times. Others talk about popular elections or introducing parliamentary politics, say, during the Song Dynasty. And there is also a lot about cultural and social reform, such as empowering women through introducing universal education and compulsory education.
I also examined whether the stories were expansionist. Many of those works, inspired by Western colonizers, advocated expanding China. As I mentioned, there are works about people traveling back to the Ming Dynasty and competing with European colonizers in the Americas. But many others are also driven by historical resentment. Many try to take over Japan, for instance. That’s driven partly by economic motives: Japan has silver mines, and in those stories Chinese take over Japan and turn it into a source of silver and a trading outpost. But as Japan did China wrong in modern history, writers also saw the need to retaliate in historical times.
They also discuss minority relations, which is interesting. Manchus appear to be the most hated ethnic group in these works because many people believe the Qing period was when China really started suffering.
AL: You discussed two very interesting examples: the “Industrial Party” and “Ruguanism.” What are those about, and what do they reveal about how contemporary Chinese understand China’s geopolitical position and history today?
RH: I describe these works as reflecting collective ideas, desires, and anxieties in Chinese society. China is, to this day, still operating within a broader framework of national salvation and national revival. Many of these Make China Great Again novels emerged before Xi Jinping officially coined the term “Chinese Dream.” Therefore, it is not the state that invented everything and then tried to indoctrinate people. Instead, the underlying desire for national revival already existed socially, and the state has been very smart in recognizing that and riding with it.
Many different thoughts are floating in Chinese cyberspace. Ruguanism compares China today to the Qing or Manchu forces before the collapse of the Ming Dynasty. It’s interesting because it’s politically incorrect: you wouldn’t expect people to compare contemporary China to the Manchus, but they do. The argument here is that contemporary China is much like the rising Qing forces, while American hegemony is comparable to the Ming Dynasty. On the surface, the Ming Dynasty appeared to be rich, powerful, and highly developed. The Manchus seemed barbaric, backward, small, and less powerful compared to the Ming. They shouldn’t have stood a chance, but they won.
That comparison is applied to U.S.-China relations today: while the U.S. seems almighty and powerful, it is nothing but the Ming Dynasty, a paper tiger. Once China crosses the “Great Wall,” it will easily defeat the United States. And Ruguan literally means “crossing the gateway of the Great Wall.” Historically, the Qing crossed through the Shanhai Pass into China proper. So, entering the gateway means taking over.
There’s also a soft power argument there. If you think about the Ming-Qing transition, Ming civilization was still more culturally attractive. Korea, for example, still admired Ming culture. In today’s lexicon, the Ming possessed “soft power”. But soft power didn’t stop the Ming from collapsing. According to this narrative, in the U.S.-China comparison, the fact that the United States enjoys soft power globally doesn’t matter. After the Qing took over, many Confucian scholars eventually began to help justify Qing rule. Ruguan thinkers argue China shouldn’t worry too much about soft power right now because once China replaces the U.S. as the global hegemon, intellectuals and global elites will eventually help legitimize Chinese leadership as well. In other words, soft power comes after crossing the gateway.
And the Industrial Party is related to debates over the proper path for China’s modernization and rise. Their answer is very simple: industrialization. Industrialization explains why China fell behind, why China has caught up lately, and why China must continue focusing on industrial upgrading in the future. Industrialization never ends. It’s always about upgrading industry, technology, manufacturing capacity, and infrastructure. So the Industrial Party believes China is fundamentally on the right path by emphasizing industrial policy and development.
AL: You close the book by describing a possible future for China through two famous literary frameworks: 1984 and Amusing Ourselves to Death. Why did you choose to frame contemporary China through both Orwell and Huxley together?
RH: I’m trying to explain why authoritarian regimes, especially China, remain resilient in the digital age. In the early internet era, many people believed the internet was inherently liberalizing and democratizing. We now know that’s not necessarily true. One explanation emphasizes state power, especially its ability to control. The extreme version of that is basically 1984: total surveillance, total domination, and total ideological imposition. But I’ve never been fully convinced by that explanation. As I said earlier, I don’t think the state has the capacity to control absolutely everything, and I also question whether it’s even in the state’s best interest to do so, as that level of repression is costly.
In 1984, people know they are being controlled, and eventually, people resist. A more ideal system from the state’s perspective would be one where there is extensive surveillance and control, but people don’t experience it as coercion. Instead, they willingly buy into the system.
That’s where Amusing Ourselves to Death and Huxley become relevant. Make China Great Again fiction is fundamentally a consumerist experience. It’s entertainment. It’s participatory. Citizens themselves produce the content.
So citizens are effectively co-producing an ideology that they themselves willingly embrace, while that ideology remains broadly compatible with the state’s larger ideological framework. That serves the function of authoritarian legitimation.
In that sense, people are socialized into loyalty through entertainment and participation rather than through direct coercion. It’s not exactly “amusing ourselves to death,” but more like amusing ourselves into loyalty.
By the way, there are clearly tensions between the Orwellian model and the Huxleyan model. From the state’s perspective, it may need to strike a balance between the two.