Make China Great Again

Online Alt-History Fiction and Popular Authoritarianism

Rongbin Han (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

240 Seiten

2026
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-22054-5 (ISBN)

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On the Chinese internet, alternate history is booming. Millions of writers and readers fantasize about going back in time and changing their country’s fate. One envisions saving the Southern Song Dynasty from the Mongols and turning China into a capitalist democracy. Another portrays a contemporary traveling to 1905 and sparking a communist revolution before the Chinese Communist Party was even founded. These stories and others like them share a theme of national revival that echoes both the official narrative of the “Chinese dream” and populist movements around the world. Why is alt-history so popular in China, and what does it reveal about politics and culture under authoritarianism?

Rongbin Han examines the production and consumption of online alt-history fiction in China, offering new insight into how authoritarian rule gains popular consent. Combining in-depth digital ethnography with analysis of dozens of alt-history novels, he explores how state intervention, market forces, and consumer preferences interact. Han argues that alt-history literature is a project of imagining an ideal China, which simultaneously legitimizes and contests state ideology. Tracing the popular resonance of the regime’s nationalist vision, he demonstrates how citizens play a crucial role in constructing and maintaining the state’s dominance. Because many see national revival as imminent under the party’s leadership, they are willing to tolerate authoritarian rule, in contrast to Western democracies, where discontent has fueled populist politics. Introducing readers to the uncanny world of alt-history, Make China Great Again underscores how aspirations for the rebirth of the nation can bolster undemocratic politics—in China and elsewhere.

Rongbin Han is professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia. He is the author of Contesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience (Columbia, 2018), coauthor of Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies: How China Wins Online (2023), and coeditor of The Xi Jinping Effect (2024).

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Online Fiction, Chinese Dream, and Pop Hegemony
1. Internet Literature in China: A Commodified Political Field
2. Dancing with Shackles On: State Intervention as Coproduction
3. Make China Great Again: Alt-History Fiction and the Chinese Dream
4. The Variety of Chinese Dreams: MCGA and Ideological Interpellation
5. More Than Audience: Reader Participation in MCGA
Conclusion: Pop Hegemony in the Making
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	31.3.2026
Zusatzinfo	5 b&w illustrations
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Systeme
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Staat / Verwaltung
	Technik ► Nachrichtentechnik
ISBN-10	0-231-22054-5 / 0231220545
ISBN-13	978-0-231-22054-5 / 9780231220545
Zustand	Neuware