It was, Chan Koonchung has observed, China’s current situation that inspired the novel. “I got the idea for the book from responses to the financial crisis of 2008-I’d been plotting a novel about China for some time, but that gave me a moment, a focus. That year, as the West reeled from the financial mess while China escaped unscathed, it seemed that everyone-from officials down to ordinary urbanites-began to feel that China was doing well for itself, that there was nothing more to learn from the West, that China can argue back… The public have now bought enthusiastically into China’s authoritarian model.” The construction of an authoritarian harmony has always been implicit in communist theory and practice, but this became official policy after 2007, when President Hu Jintao exhorted “all people [to] coexist harmoniously, love and help each other, encourage each other, and make an effort to contribute to the building of a harmonious society.”

In recent years, China’s communist government has indeed succeeded-perhaps beyond its wildest dreams-in muffling critical voices. The 1980s were choppy times for the regime, as China’s chattering classes debated the disasters of Maoism, and whether there was any place for Marxism in economic and political liberalization. As China stumbled toward a market economy and as inflation rocketed throughout the decade, the conviction grew that the government’s reforms weren’t working and the leadership had not persuaded the populace that they could lead. The most avant-garde rebels-such as the 2010 Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo-speculated that China could experience “great historical change” only if it had been colonized like Hong Kong was after the Opium War of 1839-42.