What is up with the propaganda novels that have been popping up recently? Seriously, it starts as an ok novel, then the mc gives everything he has to the government without thinking, and the government takes care of him like he's their golden boy, and everything goes perfectly. Then every few chapters there's sentences like this; (from evolving into a great dragon from a koi fish) Chu Ze could not help but exclaim, “The country is a very complicated organization. Some things are more complicated than others, but it is precisely this kind of complexity that allows the country to run smoothly.” or that moment in Mages are too OP where he gets discovered in the stupidest way and then joins the government without thinking, and they help him perfectly... in the meantime he's super cautious in the game world but towards the government? brain off all good... It kinda Flips the story for me... (and yes, i meant another word with an F) I was wondering if it's all just in my head or if you've encountered this too?
It's pretty common with CN novels. The government wouldn't tolerate the publication if it was perceived as Anti-government. There are a lot of rules that dictate what can and cannot be written. That's the CCP for you (Chinese Communist Party) whether you approve of them or not; it's the way things are.
Well CN doesn't like individuality, because if someone thinks for themselves he's a potential threat... and quantity is more important than quality...
Umm dats why many people here are dropping novel like up to that certain point when readers can't take anymore bullshit and rascism on many part of the novel but some readers persist which will be interesting to hear on what they think
As long as you're reading modern-days/global genre CN novels you should be expecting such scenes. It's like food topics in KR/JP ones. One side is constantly praising their country while another their food. I actually don't really care about it and mostly ignore it, but at times it can really be annoying and extremely off-putting. What annoys me the most are novels that suddenly change their genre or Mc's personality changes out of nowhere. I was reading this relatively new 'My Post-Apocalyptic Shelter Levels Up Infinitely' and it was pretty good for about 140+ chapters. But then suddenly loner MC began singing praises about 'amazing chinese patriotic youths' and started working together with them. Even though they were completely useless in the story before and MC was fully self-sufficient I couldn't take it anymore and dropped it. 'Look at how they massacred my boy'
It's honestly something you can find anywhere, novels going "my country is great and [insert enemy country] sucks!" Pretty much every country has enough people who would like that, so it's not going to be bad for sales to include it generally. There's also unintentional propaganda, where some authors make the world revolve around their country, like hm, England being the center of the wizarding world just because that's where the protagonist would be. It's clear that author didn't intentionally try to make her country look good and didn't put too much thought into it, but it's something that's unlikely if you think about it. The issue with Chinese novels is the CCP looking over the authors' shoulders and going "You didn't praise China enough recently. -10 points for Gryffindor!" (they seriously have a point system showing how good each person is as a "citizen") forcing authors to hastily edit in praises for China. Propaganda for "the government is trustworthy and always has your best interests at heart". Propaganda showing that supporting the government is best. Propaganda supporting the army as trustworthy. etc etc.
well thats true on certain sense, the debate which section that have too much or to little bureaucracy still on going everywhere~ distrust toward government mean the government is suck~ well more than that then lets switch place to talk about it~ well it partly blame the western fault for accusing china for various reason so yeah~ or it about the infamous social credit.... heh~ blaming each other while one side kinda just say bad bad bad~ interesting stuff~ anyway this cat kinda used to such thing on entertainment media~ thanks to Hollywood movies lol~ sometimes it annoying tho cuz it feels cheap way to promoting the story~
But the example he quoted didn't show that, to me, it just showed the mutual interests. He gave something to the government in exchange for protection. You could argue that the MC is dumb for doing that, but from the example he gave the author didn't indicate that one should trust the government.
From my experience, while a lot of these books can seem like they're spouting propaganda, I don't feel that any of it is coming from government pressure. For starters, regardless of how much jingoism a writer inserts into his book, if it has bannable material it will still get censored. So the idea that putting in propaganda will allow a book to be unmolested just doesn't work. Instead, most of this kind of material is something that the writer sincerely believes in, and it's the kind of story that he wants to tell. This is even more obvious as he will often talk about the subject in the author's notes. There are a lot of Chinese chauvinists out there, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that they'll write books as often as anyone else. There is also a chance that some of it comes from reader feedback and the writer wanting to appease his audience, but I suspect that only a tiny portion of these jingoistic books suffer from this.
Not that I've read any of those particular examples brought up here, but most of the time I wouldn't directly call it propaganda but rather at most possibly that the author might have a worldview that has been affected by propaganda. And even if there are authors do knowingly insert pro-government propaganda in their stories I'm more willing to believe it is because there is an audience for it rather than it being to please the government. And honestly none of this is unique to chinese stories, you find similar things to varying degrees in many other countries as well.
Just avoid novels in modern day settings. CN and KR novels tend to be pretty blatant in that specific genre.