“Where Silicon Valley imagines itself through Middle-earth, Mars, and cyberspace, China’s tech world thinks simultaneously in terms of the jianghu.”
– Writer
Afra Wang, contrasting the literary foundations of Eastern and Western tech cultures. Tracing how Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi founders draw from Jin Yong’s
jianghu (a fictional realm of martial artists operating outside state authority) and Liu Cixin’s
cosmic metaphors, Wang exposes Silicon Valley’s blind spot about the literature shaping its rivals’ worldview.
