Climate Change & Contemporary Chinese Science & Speculative Fiction - Talk by Angela Chan by angelaytc

Originally presented at 'Beyond Borders: Empires, Bodies, Science Fictions' Conference, London Science Fiction Research Community
(online and London)

Recorded for the 'Hybrid Conference: Radical Streams' curated by Migrant Journal and FIBER Festival 2020
(online and Amsterdam)

September 2020

==============

Abstract

Whilst the growing attention in contemporary Chinese SF on domestic environmental affairs is one half of the story, narrating China’s environmental relations overseas is the difficult other. This paper explores the need and potential for Chinese SF to address climate justice that goes beyond its current boundaries of mainland China, and out towards the country’s own questionable environmental practices in Africa and Southeast Asia.

In recent years, Chinese SF stories increasingly highlight climate and environmental themes, such as ocean plastic and e-waste pollution, urban waste management industries and sea-level rise. Alongside globalised techno-capitalism and mass consumerism, the authors offer cultural considerations to current social topics in China, such as migrant labourer rights, economic disparity and industrial waste activism.

However, Chinese state and commercial activities are creating uneven developments and socio-ecological degradation, impacting people across Africa and Southeast Asia. ‘Debt colonialism’ through industrial development projects and resource extractions in China’s efforts to stockpile minerals are issues of great socio-environmental concern. Whilst African SF growingly narrates themes of Chinese ‘neocolonialism’, there has been little writing from Chinese SF on this. Together fulfilling the notion of climate justice in climate SF, it is urgent to address the issue of racism in mainstream Chinese society.

In my presentation, I outline the stylistic and thematic portrayals of climate and environmental issues in key contemporary Chinese SF stories. Then, I draw from my combined literary, social science and decolonial climate research to explain why Chinese SF writers should look beyond domestic Chinese environmentalism, and include geographies of China’s extractive interactions in Africa and Southeast Asia. Reiterating contemporary Chinese SF authors’ and scholars’ ambitions in redefining global SF, I close in encouraging climate change Chinese SF to recognise and tell the necessary worldbuilding stories that defy hegemonies, as China calculates its new era of global relations.