This is like the mirror image of the popular Chinese content of picking a few homeless scenes of the US and painting the whole image of US life experience from it.
Obviously, the author has deep engagement with the Chinese internet culture (the "junk food" part that I would avert), but the over generalization is comical.
Or maybe that's the point? The author is trying to be provocative? For someone with zero background of the Chinese internet culture, this could be a starting point (although an extreme one), but don't take this to represent the whole reality.
One example, the quoted book review of Three Body Problem draws the complete opposite conclusion that the aliens are Chinese. To anyone with actual Chinese culture context, they are obviously "Westerners".
<spoilers>
- Far more advanced technologies.
- The Trisolarians cannot lie, so that becomes the only advantage of humanity. -> Art of War
- The Trisolarians are blocking physical experiments to stop science and technology advancement. -> Entity list and export control. Huawei.
- The factions in human that supports the invasion. -> Evans hated humanity because of The Silent Spring, which is supposed to represent the Western self-guilt culture.
- The emaciated generation that failed at launching the mutually assured destruction device is an image of "Westernized" generation.
The overarching background of the book is a discussion of which direction that China should take after 1989 stopped the democratization process and drove the Western powers into hostility. The author Cixin Liu has a more or less social darwinism answer for that ("Dark Forest"). Not that he endorsed social darwinism, but that's the main theme of the book.
You've misread/misunderstood the book review. It's saying the exact opposite, and the same thing as you; that in the book, the aliens are more like westerners, and the humans Chinese.
The thesis as given - "The real aliens are the Chinese people" (note the 'real') - is saying that, to an American reading the book, the portrayal of the humans feels more alien than the extraterrestrial aliens, while the extraterrestrial aliens are closer to familiar western culture.
crvdgc · · focus · HN ↗
Obviously, the author has deep engagement with the Chinese internet culture (the "junk food" part that I would avert), but the over generalization is comical.
Or maybe that's the point? The author is trying to be provocative? For someone with zero background of the Chinese internet culture, this could be a starting point (although an extreme one), but don't take this to represent the whole reality.
One example, the quoted book review of Three Body Problem draws the complete opposite conclusion that the aliens are Chinese. To anyone with actual Chinese culture context, they are obviously "Westerners".
<spoilers>
- Far more advanced technologies.
- The Trisolarians cannot lie, so that becomes the only advantage of humanity. -> Art of War
- The Trisolarians are blocking physical experiments to stop science and technology advancement. -> Entity list and export control. Huawei.
- The factions in human that supports the invasion. -> Evans hated humanity because of The Silent Spring, which is supposed to represent the Western self-guilt culture.
- The emaciated generation that failed at launching the mutually assured destruction device is an image of "Westernized" generation.
The overarching background of the book is a discussion of which direction that China should take after 1989 stopped the democratization process and drove the Western powers into hostility. The author Cixin Liu has a more or less social darwinism answer for that ("Dark Forest"). Not that he endorsed social darwinism, but that's the main theme of the book.
</spoilers>
ksymph · · focus · HN ↗
The thesis as given - "The real aliens are the Chinese people" (note the 'real') - is saying that, to an American reading the book, the portrayal of the humans feels more alien than the extraterrestrial aliens, while the extraterrestrial aliens are closer to familiar western culture.