Came here to post Charles Stross's article about this and found it in a 2nd level comment, but it needs to be 1st level: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldco...
It's not as simple as it seems, as normal
It's not as simple as it seems, as normal
And in the author's world-building, although magical resources are widely distributed, the only group which seems to be figuring out how to actually exploit them to increase wealth is England. But to the characters in the book, figuring out how to use those things at all, i.e. natural resource exploitation/study/efficiency improvement/industrialization is viewed as nothing more than stealing from indigenous people, rather than being a positive sum contribution to humanity. The fact that the original possessors of the silver, and other magical goods weren't doing anything with it is not mentioned. (at least in the 20% of the book I read before this scene, which basically suggests that non-white people should naturally coordinate to attack their white oppressors, led me to deleting it.)
It's also funny that in this book, she's putting out pretty basic CCP anti-western rhetoric, like many other bloodthirsty communists I've met; yet here, she is being defended by normally pro-american, anti-censorship voices, while the CCP is being cast as "oppressing" her. Kuang, an illiberal person, whose education consisted of private school (Greenhill school, today's tuition 32k->39k/year) => Georgetown => Oxford => Yale
"The Chinese censors don't like her (we're assumming), so she must be defended and China must be punished".
Ok, got it.
"No, actually, she is anti-colonialist in her basic world view, and she shows (through her main protagonist) insufficient gratitude to the white westerners who 'saved' her".
So we must burn her at the stake, lest others be influenced by this evil agenda.
Err, ok ...
I guess all that remains is for y'all to ask her "but, do you condemn the khhammas?"
But the pairing of the intentionally racist stereotype of a loutish brit (not a type I'd defend, but it really is a silly stereotype, especially here where it was totally out of nowhere) followed by a scene which, against her own case, validates that idiot's attacks, just made me lose it.
Like, if you're trying to be anti-racist, don't have your main characters immediately confirm the worst racial stereotypes that the "intended-to-be-hated" racist majority just accused them of (i.e. of disloyalty and ungratefulness to their host country, radical attempts to overthrow the governments which accepted them). It's way beyond multiculturalism - instead, it's basically saying that multiculturalism can't work because even the best newly arrived groups will naturally flip into opposition as radical terrorists. How can we build a multi-cultural society when people we're meant to sympathize with, act like that?
Anyway, good luck with the read. I may have overreacted, or it may redeem itself later. I didn't do extensive further research on her work beyond listening to a few interviews to check if I was just totally misreading.