-By Warner Todd Huston
A left-wing science fiction site hosted by the Gawker chain of websites recently posted a silly, fawning article revealing that the Chinese government is sponsoring a new “major science fiction award.” It was a piece that wholly ignored the autocratic and murderous history of the Chinese government and ridiculously treated this “award” as a legitimate celebration of the arts.
The website i09,com posted a piece (June 4, “The Chinese Government is Setting Up Its Own Major Science Fiction Award“) by blogger Andrew Liptak who revealed himself to be absolutely clueless about how oppressive China is and seemed to assume that China–being just like every western country–is just doing the world a service with its new “award” instead of creating a scheme whereby an authoritarian government will control “art”–or at the very least holding up state propaganda as worthy of awards.
“This is pretty interesting,” Liptak says as he begins his slobbering article, “during the latest national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology, chairman Han Qide announced that the country would be setting up a program to promote science fiction and fantasy, including the creation of a new major award.”
Now, let’s first wonder exactly what liberals like Mr. Liptak and his audience would say if the U.S. government–or any western government, for that matter–were to announce it intended to meddle in a field of literature like this. Mr. Liptak would be one of the first to denounce the intentions and to scream that said government would be merely spreading propaganda and not the art of literature. Or at the very least he’d be uncomfortable with the idea of a government promoting art for fear that it would eventually turn to pushing pro-government propaganda.
But in Liptak’s piece we get not a whiff that he should be worried that the Chinese government would use its award not to celebrate art on its own merit but rather to further the communist government’s message.
Now, one could just blow Liptak off as one of those typically, uninformed liberals who purposefully keeps himself blissfully ignorant of the oppressive, inhuman history of the current, murderous Chinese regime.
Sadly, one would be mistaken to imagine such a thing. Liptak has written other pieces where he clearly understands that Chinese science fiction has traditionally been only another arm of propaganda for the Chinese government.
Not only has Liptak admitted that China’s communist government murdered millions of its own through its cynically named “Great Leap Forward,” he even noted directly that Chinese sci fi is just government approved propaganda. So, it isn’t like Liptak is looking at China with simple uninformed, fanboy love for its new “major award.”
But he is, sadly, looking at China through rose colored glasses and purposefully ignoring the millions China has already murdered, the millions more it likely will murder in the near future, and the tens of thousands who are today being tortured daily or languishing for decades in the country’s political jails.
Further, Liptak notes that some Chinese sci fi writers have in the last decade or so tried to write real sci fi free of pure government propaganda and that the Chinese government hasn’t really initiated a crack down on these authors quite yet.
With that in mind, it is inconceivable that Liptak doesn’t understand that this “award” is likely the Chinese tyranny’s first step toward that very crack down.
Despite his clear knowledge of the inhuman history of the current Chinese regime, though, despite that he full well knows that Chinese authors have been tortured, raped, imprisoned and murdered for decades, Liptak is nothing if not filled with a Chris Matthews tingle down his leg for China’s new government controlled “award.”
Liptak ends his clueless piece at i09 saying, “this could be the start of a promising new wave of exciting new fiction for readers across the world.”
Sure it could.
Now, is there no reason at all to hope for humane progress in China? You’d have to be blind not to see that things really have changed to a small degree in the world’s most populous nation. Of course it is possible to believe that these changes could lead to an open society at some point in the distant future–or sooner should there be an uprising or convulsion of some sort.
But the blind assumption that everything in China is just hunkydory and to assume this new “major award” can be nothing but a good thing for “the world” is as clueless as it gets.
Unfortunately, like all liberals, Liptak refuses to believe there is a train on the tracks even as it is bearing down upon him. Communism, he seems to believe, is a great thing… it just hasn’t been tried right yet… and we can’t blame the murderous Chinese for those 50 million dead bumps in the road as they strive to bring the world a “promising new wave of exciting new science fiction.”
How clueless.
Finally, let me here note that I am not just indulging what many academics call the right’s “irrational fear of communism.” In fact, we can already see the baleful influence of China on artistic expression in the greater world beyond China’s borders.
Hollywood, for instance, has for the last ten years bent over backwards to alter its product to appeal to Chinese censors.
The recent James Bond movie “Skyfall” is just one example. The producers of “Skyfall” fell all over themselves to alter their movie to suit the delicate sensibilities of China’s autocrats.
And that is western art being altered to suit the Chinese, imagine how bad the pressure will be on these Chinese sci fi authors to toe the communist government’s line?
For Liuptak not to even pay these fears lip service is simply incredible. It is also a disservice to his readers.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, Federalist Papers, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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