China as an Open-World Game: A Fiction Invented and Played by Its Own People

People often assume that "China" is an eternal entity with five thousand years of history, continuous culture, and unshakeable identity. However, if we examine it carefully, we discover that "China" itself is a modern invention. Liang Qichao's generation, in order to catch up with the trend of modern nation-states, pieced together a concept of "Chinese nation" and used it as a template to create the so-called "China."

I. From Invention to Fill-in-the-Blanks

Intellectuals like Liang Qichao, Zhang Taiyan, and Sun Yat-sen lived in the moment of imperial collapse. They needed a modern "national" narrative to resist foreign powers, so they invented a collective entity—"China." This invention itself had no historical depth; it was merely an "imagined community" fabricated to counter external threats.

Later scholars, historians, and propagandists began "filling in the blanks" generation after generation:

Five thousand years of history were woven together,

The "Chinese nation" was set as eternally unchanging,

Ancient divisions, conquests, and mixtures were all forcibly stuffed into a unified narrative.

Thus, a "Chinese history" was constructed, like completing a fill-in-the-blanks exam—not caring about logic or authenticity, as long as it could fill the continuity of "China."

II. The Game's Worldview

If this set of "Chinese history" was still just a half-finished product, then after the Communist Party came to power, it was completely upgraded into a complete "open-world game."

Game Setting: Communism is the highest mission, the Chinese nation is an eternal identity, China is an indivisible whole.

Game Map: The eighteen provinces, borderlands, and seas are all drawn into the game scene.

Game NPCs: Over a billion people are told that their lives, identities, and thoughts must be completed within this worldview.

Game Plot: Anti-Japanese war, liberation, revival—each chapter is scripted, players can only follow the script.

Thus, Chinese people live like characters in worlds such as Cyberpunk 2077, GTA, or Red Dead Redemption. The difference is that those are real video games, while this one is packaged as reality.

III. The Nature of a Castle in the Air

This "China" open world is essentially a castle in the air.

It has no real historical foundation, but is a modern artificial concept;

It has no natural cultural continuity, but is maintained through propaganda and violence;

It has no independent authentic identity, but constantly depends on external forces, constantly betrays, and constantly rewrites.

Yet people exhaust their lives in this virtual world: hating, worshipping, struggling, obsessing, completely treating themselves as characters in the game, forgetting that this is just a human-made script.

IV. Conclusion

The so-called "China" is not an eternally existing homeland, but an open-world game invented by Liang Qichao's generation, supplemented by later scholars, and perfected by the Communist Party.

It has maps, plots, and settings, but no foundation.

Chinese people live in it like NPCs in a virtual world: serious, persistent, yet never realizing that their lives are merely part of a script.

This is the greatest irony: over a billion people think they live in reality, when in fact they are trapped in a fabricated game.