Gen Z ‘Chinamaxxers’ fantasise about life in China. This journalist and this artist can never go back there — SkimNews
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- Melissa Chan and Badiucao released their debut graphic novel You Must Take Part in Revolution, depicting a dystopian 2035 where China is at war with the US; the book is out now in Australia (Affirm Press, $39.99) and the US, with a UK release set for 8 October.
- Chan, a former Al Jazeera journalist, was expelled from China in 2012 after officials refused to renew her press credentials, while Badiucao — previously anonymous — was forced to reveal his identity in 2019 after authorities threatened his family in China.
- The novel features characters from the Hong Kong, Taiwan, US, and Tibet diaspora deciding what choices they will make under authoritarian oppression, and intentionally portrays the US as a "proto-fascist state"; Chan says, "if things are shit, they're shit in any country."
- The book opens with the real-life 2019 Hong Kong protests, when almost two million people demonstrated against an extradition law viewed as expanding mainland influence.
- Readers including Ukrainian refugees escaping Russia's invasion and Czech communities who lived through the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic have contacted the authors, drawing parallels between the novel and their own histories of authoritarian rule.
- Badiucao dismisses the Gen Z "Chinamaxxing" trend — young westerners drinking Tsingtao, eating congee, and filming TikToks in Chongqing — as "the lazy way," a "cheap alternative" to the hard work of seeking societal change.
- Stylistically the book draws from Japanese manga like Attack on Titan rather than Spiegelman's Maus, which Badiucao says can "influence an entire generation."
Why it matters: The novel reframes "Chinamaxxing" — Gen Z's ironic romanticization of life in China — by anchoring it in the concrete costs of dissent: Chan's 2012 expulsion and Badiucao's 2019 forced exposure. Its deliberate refusal to spare the US from critique distinguishes it from single-axis anti-China narratives, and its manga-style format is explicitly chosen to reach readers who might not pick up a traditional political book.
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