How this brutal work of fiction is becoming terrifying reality

In their graphic novel You Must Take Part in Revolution, writer Melissa Chan and artist/activist Badiucao imagine a horrifying dystopian future.

China is a brutal authoritarian, hyper-surveilled state, harnessing AI to control every aspect of its people’s lives, while the US has descended into open fascism. A divided Taiwan is the flashpoint between the two.

Chan and Badiucao began work on the book more than five years ago and, since then, their bleak imaginings, made all the more terrifying by Badiucao’s brutal red and black ink-wash style illustrations, have proved eerily prescient, particularly when it comes to technology.

“We realised the future that we imagined was just catching up,” says Badiucao, from his Melbourne home. “When we started, there’s no Ukraine invasion from Russia. There is no conflict in the Middle East. There is no bombing in Gaza. There is no war in Iran, but now everything has turned into reality and also AI is catching up. We feel like we’ve already got caught up by history instead of predicting the history.

“It’s supposed to be a novel fiction, but now we feel like a lot of that we predicted years ago has come to reality. But of course, the story is ending in 2035, which is still about 10 years away, but I would say every index and indication is unfortunately pointing to that very likely ending.”

For Shanghai-born Badiucao – a Walkley Award winner who also contributes to The Age – You Must Take Part in Revolution is deeply personal. He says he and his family in China are subject to continuing harassment from Chinese authorities over his deeply political work.

“I don’t think the Chinese Communist Party will ever forget or forgive its enemies, which in this case is me,” he said in 2019, shortly after being forced to cancel a Hong Kong exhibition after his family in China were threatened. It was then he abandoned the cloak of anonymity he had adopted and which led to him being labelled “China’s Banksy”.

You Must Take Part in Revolution follows three main characters and their different responses to oppression.

“Even though they’re facing the same struggle, they make completely different choices,” says Badiucao. “How should we act? Should we be frozen and try to wait it out like a lot of people in America until waiting out Trump’s second presidency, or should we fight, but which is the better way to fight?

“Do we adapt the Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo’s motto ‘I have no enemy’, thus it has to be peaceful protest or should we do something more aggressive and end up adopting violence?”

Badiucao says the narrative leaves the reader to make their own mind up.

“We have no concrete judgment on if what they’re doing is right or wrong because every decision comes from their circumstance and sometimes it seems like almost no choices,” he says.

“But I guess our message is that there’s always consequence whether you choose to fight or not, whether you choose to fight peacefully or violently. We all should understand the consequences coming with those actions and be prepared to live with them.

“We just want to place all the past in front of our readers and show the possible outcomes.”

And his own choice – to challenge Beijing direct through his work – comes with real-world consequences both for him and his family.

“The reality is really harsh,” he says. “In daily life I have to look over my shoulder all the time and be aware of all the issues, but in the same time I think making art also served as a therapy for me. I can really forget. Even though my work is about that harsh reality, when you create images, all I’m thinking is composition, tones and lines, words and colours.”

And he takes comfort that a single individual armed only with pen and paper can so unsettle a vast regime like the Chinese government.

“The Chinese government know how powerful art can be and if they cannot control it they choose to destroy it,” he says.

“I feel art serves almost like a glue between people because it talks a language that maybe some people are incapable of expressing, but it doesn’t mean those words and meaning are not circulating in their minds.”

Badiucao and Chan will speak about their work in Sydney during next month’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas.

They join a range of thinkers and artists that include Salman Rushdie, Glenn Loury, Cory Doctorow and Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina.

Starting on August 20, the festival has been expanded to 10 days and this year will include art, film and excursions alongside the talks program.

“The world is so much more dangerous than ever,” said festival director Danielle Harvey. “So 10 days feels hardly adequate even to scratch the surface.”

And in the face of huge challenges from AI to climate change and the rise of authoritarianism to multiple global conflicts, the chance to consider radical ideas has never been more important.

‘Simplicity is nice if you can afford it. I don’t think we can afford it.’

Danielle Harvey

“There are overlapping crises,” said Harvey. “And there are competing truths. Simplicity is nice if you can afford it. I don’t think we can afford it. I think let’s hear from other people, let’s challenge ourselves, let’s sit in that complexity, let’s face it, and have fun while we do it, too.

“This is an offer to not retreat, to come together, fill your brain or your eyeballs and face that complexity. There is no other festival of dangerous ideas in the world. Only Sydney has one, which I think is pretty cool.”

However, Harvey said that while outrage undoubtedly sells she wasn’t interested in programming speakers merely because they were shocking or provocative: “Sometimes they are, but we program people because we want to hear what they have to say and they’re going to come and do that in good faith.”

Festival of Dangerous Ideas, August 20 to 30. Key events at Sydney Town Hall and Carriageworks.