Chan Koon-chung, the renowned Hong Kong-born author residing in Beijing, has recently published his latest novel, an alternate history narrative, which explores what modern China would be like if the Communist Party never came to power.
Titled “The Second Year of Jianfeng: A Uchronia of the New China,” the novel’s publication was marked with a book launch in Hong Kong on Sept. 25. Chan’s previous work, the dystopian novel “The Fat Years,” remains unpublished in mainland China.
“Uchronia,” drawing from the etymology of “utopia,” is a word describing an alternate or postulated reality.
Chan’s novel posits a Nationalist Party victory in the Chinese civil war, which followed on the heels of World War II and in our reality ended in communist occupation of mainland China in 1949.
From there, the novel builds a parallel history of China under the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Writing from the perspective of people of multiple social and geographical backgrounds, Chan weaves a three-decade description of the alternate “New China” up to the end of the 1970s.
The scenario is one that has been gaining interest, even internationally, as China modernizes and gains in global relevance—and the drawbacks of its peculiar configuration of nationalism, Leninism, and singular attitude to the rule of law begin to be more acutely felt. Earlier this year, The Economist ran a speculative piece for those wondering how China might look were it not for the brutal and inefficient totalitarian policies executed by founding communist leader Mao Zedong.
