Add to ORKGCreative fiction has a venerable history in the People’s Republic of China. Many would argue that the nation’s very foundations lie in its creative fictions. Nonetheless, one of the achievements of the post-Mao era is that the voices and stories of the many have challenged the previous monologue of the party-state, enriching or at least complicating it in the process. There’s the saying that everyone has a book in them, but in Big Daddy Xi Jinping’s increasingly ideologically policed China, there is an unsettling possibility that everyone may end up writing the same tome. As this essay by the noted Australian writer Nicholas Jose points out, independent creative writing has flourished in mainland China in recent years. It is hardly a sur...