Chinese space companies are only just starting out compared to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. But they are catching up fast. And there are a whole series of Chinese private companies that want to surpass the Americans.
The chances are good. In true Beijing style, the Chinese leadership has declared space travel a key technology. Several dozen companies immediately rush into the market. Officially, these are private companies. But as is so often the case, the government has a hand in it. Even if it is only for the awarding of contracts. Contracts related to China’s national space ambitions are considered particularly lucrative, writes Joern Petring in his analysis.
Today’s column by Johnny Erling is also about taking the top spot: He explains how the Chinese leadership has been vying for years for Beijing’s city center to take the top spot on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Beijing’s imperial north-south axis has now been included – and with it, Tiananmen Square and Mao’s mausoleum. However, Rome’s Via Appia remains number one. Not all roads lead to Beijing yet.
China’s focus on promoting high-tech industries also gives the country’s private space companies a kickstart. One clear sign that Beijing wants to boost the companies is the increasing number of reports in the state media in recent weeks. For example, the official news agency Xinhua reported increased government support. Companies like Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology, better known as iSPACE, will likely benefit from the initiative.
The Beijing-based private space company has set its sights on catching up with leading US companies, particularly Elon Musk’s SpaceX. However, despite years of research, the gap is still considerable. SpaceX has long since evolved into a giant. The company has lucrative contracts with NASA and has already conducted over 300 successful landings with its reusable Falcon 9 boosters.
The technology was first used successfully in 2015 and has proven highly reliable. Some boosters have completed over 20 launches, underlining the efficiency and cost savings through reusability. SpaceX has also successfully launched thousands of Starlink satellites into space, creating a global satellite internet service.
Compared to SpaceX, private Chinese space companies are still in their infancy. “There is still a long way ahead. But we’re catching up fast,” Vice Manager of iSPACE Anna Choi told Xinhua. Six years ago, the Chinese start-up achieved its first breakthrough: It successfully launched a satellite into a 300-kilometer-orbit for the first time with its SQX-1 Y1 rocket.
In December 2023, iSPACE conducted a short test flight with its reusable Hyperbola-2Y rocket. However, it only hovered in the air briefly before returning to the ground. iSPACE plans to put a reusable medium-range rocket into orbit by the end of 2025. Since its foundation in 2016, the company has grown steadily from ten employees to over 400.
iSPACE is not alone. As it became increasingly apparent in recent years that Beijing wants to make the industry a key sector, numerous new companies were founded. Some important names besides iSPACE are:
Another frequently mentioned company is CAS Space. However, as it was spun off from the state-owned CASC group, it is not a purely private player.
The main center of the Chinese private space industry is Beijing. The capital attracts many companies thanks to a wealth of talent and a supportive political environment. In February 2024, Beijing announced plans for a “rocket road” – a dedicated R&D and production hub for commercial space flight. Construction work began last month in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (BDA) in the south-eastern district of Daxing.
Many of China’s space start-ups hope to win contracts in the satellite sector. They aim to gain domestic and international customers to transport satellites into orbit. Like SpaceX or Boeing with NASA, the Chinese companies also aim to partner with the China National Space Administration. Contracts related to China’s national space ambitions, such as supplying the Chinese space station, are considered extremely lucrative.
China has achieved significant achievements in space in recent years. Several successful lunar missions, which have always gone precisely according to plan, show just how capable the state-owned space companies are.
However, the Chinese government is also aware of the limitations of this approach. It recognizes that state-owned companies are innovating in their own sluggish, bureaucratic way. That is why it is increasingly interested in establishing commercial companies as an important part of the space sector – just like the West.
Shortly before the Olympic Games in Paris started, the People’s Republic received a symbolic gold medal in advance. UNESCO unexpectedly honored Beijing’s imperial north-south axis 北京中轴线 with the title of “World Heritage Site.”
The news made big waves. Beijing’s authorities had campaigned for 13 years, while courageous critics protested online. UNESCO decided in Beijing’s favor: Due to the over 700-year history of the Central Axis, because of the unique temples, gates, or bridges, and because of governmental declarations to preserve the historical substance. The 7.8 kilometer-long axis is iconic for the Imperial Palace at its center, the Drum Tower to the north and the Temple of Heaven to the south.
Yet it is not actually a street, but a concept overloaded with philosophical meanings for the design and direction of imperial processional routes. Its conceived architecture is inspired by the civilizational and cultural traditions of the 中 and 和 as well as the Confucian teachings of center and moderation (中庸). Rulers of the three dynasties (Yuan, Ming, Qing) adhered to the axis constructed based on the principles of geomancy (fengshui). At specific times, they traveled along its 15 elements from the Imperial Palace and through its gates to the north to the Drum and Bell Tower. They made a pilgrimage south to the Temple of Agriculture and the Temple of Heaven to the Yongdingmen Gate.
The crux of the matter today is that the historical axis crosses Tiananmen Square, which the rulers of the People’s Republic remodeled in the 1950s, destroying its structure and symmetry beyond recognition. Mao turned it into the world’s largest marching ground for mass parades and ordered the narrow Changan Street outside Tiananmen Gate to be converted into a giant 120-meter-wide boulevard. He also ordered Beijing’s famous city walls to be razed and almost all 32 inner and outer city gates to be demolished.
In the debate on whether China should apply to UNESCO to grant Beijing’s imperial north-south city axis, which runs across Tiananmen Square, the status of a World Heritage Site, Chinese critics also wrote that the People’s Republic had already destroyed the historic square beyond recognition. Moreover, Mao had the most important imperial entrance gate, “Zhonghuamen” (front), built in 1417, demolished by 1959 and flanked both sides of the square with two mammoth buildings: On one side, the Great Hall of the People, the People’s Congress, on the other, the National Museum of China. After Mao died in 1977, his huge mausoleum was erected on the site of the Zhonghuamen Gate.
The designation of the Beijing Axis as a new World Heritage Site includes Tiananmen Square with Mao’s death shrine. After Mao’s death, he was laid out in a crystal coffin in a gigantic mausoleum explicitly built for him in the middle of the square. Despite such alterations, Tiananmen Square is now a World Heritage Site as part of the Central Axis, much to the delight of the Beijing leadership.
UNESCO’s decision was so momentous that China’s National State Administration of Cultural Heritage 国家文物局 meticulously covered it in the August issue of the CC theory magazine Qiushi: “July 27 at 11:15 a.m. local time, the 46th UNESCO session ‘Beijing’s Central Axis. Urban Masterpiece of the Order of an Ideal Capital’ 北京中轴线–中国理想都城秩序的杰作 as a World Heritage Site. At 7.8 kilometers, it is “the longest city axis in the world.”
The state authority wrote even more proudly: “My country now ranks first in the world with 59 World Heritage Sites recognized by UNESCO.” However, this much jubilation was premature, as the UN agency declared 12 other international cultural objects as “World Heritage Sites” on July 27, including the Roman Via Appia, the “Queen of Roads.” Italy ranks first on the UNESCO list with 60 World Heritage sites. China only takes second place.
But the People’s Republic has taken precautions. It nominated 59 candidates for future votes. UNESCO maintains a tentative list on which all countries can submit proposals for the coveted title of “World Heritage Site.” UNESCO first adopted its World Heritage Convention in 1972 and enacted it in 1975. According to UNESCO statistics, there are currently 1223 World Heritage sites across 168 countries. The World Heritage label promises prestige and tourism revenue.
That is why China is the biggest applicant. Even though it only joined the Convention in 1985, its provinces, cities and state cultural authorities have been flooding the UN bodies with applications non-stop. This is also politically motivated. The UNESCO designations serve Beijing as proof of the cultural superiority of its civilization. Party leader Xi Jinping has pledged to fuse China’s traditional culture with Marxism as a new theory on which he wants to build his own special socialism “in the new era.”
According to “thepaper.cn,” Shanghai’s official agency, Xi “called for efforts to take this UNESCO inclusion as an opportunity to further strengthen the comprehensive and systematic protection of cultural and natural heritage and make good use of them to better meet the people’s needs.” Xi has always advocated the inclusion of Beijing’s Axis, China’s state television CCTV reported.
The decision to include the axis not only honors the unique historical buildings, gates and palaces. Tiananmen Square is also part of the axis. Critics on China’s social media formed twice, in 2011 and 2018, calling the square “unworthy and a mockery of a World Heritage Site.” After all, the controversial Tiananmen Square did not exist before 1949. Historically, it was only a kind of outer courtyard or ceremonial passageway for China’s emperors on the way to sacred sites south of Beijing. The so-called China Gate once used to stand in front of Tiananmen Gate as the historic entrance building to the Imperial Palace. Only the emperor and a select few were allowed to pass through. His court had to walk through the galleries on either side.
When it was built in 1417, it was first called 大明门 “Great Ming Gate,” later 大清门 “Great Qing Gate.” The Republic of 1911 christened it Zhonghuamen 中华门 “China’s Gate.” The vernacular just called it 国门, the State Gate. In 1954, Mao, advised by Soviet experts, decided to demolish this gate to expand the square, which was done in 1959. After Mao’s death, the mausoleum was built in 1977 on the site of the former gate. A 100-year-old historical photo shows how imposing and urbanistically invaluable the China Gate used to be before Mao ordered the radical reconstruction.
Liang Sicheng, who was already a world-famous urban planner and architect in Beijing at the time, tried in vain to persuade him to change his mind and asked him to relocate or spare the capital to preserve the imperial city center as a wonder of the world and a “jewel” of humanity. Liang suffered criticism, ridicule and scorn and was only rehabilitated 50 years later, long after his death. His warnings not to destroy the Imperial City proved right.
Today, the critical debate has fallen silent. Beijing’s leadership has turned Tiananmen Square, where it receives its state guests, where it hoists its state flag every morning at sunrise and celebrates national holidays, into the sacrosanct, outwardly political center and landmark of the People’s Republic. Now, it is delighted that it has become a World Heritage Site. The State Administration of Cultural Heritage writes in the CC Magazine that the Central Axis World Heritage Site also includes the square “with all its interlocking elements” 全要素、一次性列入. The “Tiananmen Square, including its buildings” 天安门广场及建筑群 is one of the 15 elements of the Central Axis.
Beijing’s planners long assumed that their wish for the axis to become a World Heritage Site would not come true before 2035. In late 2023, Beijing presented a 140-page public master plan for protecting and managing the Central Axis from 2022 to 2035 for the first time. In 2012, the State Administration of Culture Heritage added the candidacy of the Beijing Axis to the UNESCO candidate list. One year earlier, Shan Jixiang 单霁翔, former head of the cultural authority and director of the Gugong Palace Museum, had submitted the application to the advisory parliament. Today he says: “We waited 13 years.”
He had already campaigned for the preservation and renovation of the historic inner city axis in 2002, when Beijing was preparing to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. The site for the Olympic Village and the two main stadiums for the Games was planned for the north of Beijing as a direct extension of the famous axis. Now, a new meaning was sought for its integration.
Beijing was even willing to seek advice from foreign consulting firms, including the only German company, Frankfurt-based “AS&P Albert Speer und Partner.” It took its project group four months, Johannes Dell, at the time Speer’s China representative and partner, recalls. They then presented their proposal at the public hearing to turn Beijing’s underdeveloped districts in the south into a continuation of the axis and a counterpoint to the Olympic North as a transportation hub centered around rail traffic. “Speer, who presented the concept to the city commission, impressed his listeners,” says architect Sun Zhuo, a translator at Speer’s hearing at the time and now Johannes Dell’s wife. Today, Beijing’s south has become a train station and hub for China’s high-speed rail network, which was not built until after 2008.
The UNESCO shortlist for new international World Heritage Sites includes a particularly ambitious project submitted in 2016 among China’s inflationary 59 applications: It is a listing of all Chinese inland and coastal projects related to the land and water routes of the Silk Road. After Italy reminded the world of the old saying that “all roads lead to Rome” after its Via Appia was declared a World Heritage Site, Beijing seems to have bigger plans. With the boost and help of the UNESCO World Heritage designation, Beijing aims for a future where all roads lead to China thanks to the Silk Road.
The recently released computer role-playing game “Black Myth: Wukong” (picture right), developed in China, is already considered a milestone with its stunning graphics. Sun Wukong, the eponymous monkey king from the famous novel “Journey to the West,” has long been an evergreen in China’s pop culture.
Almost every generation has its own Wukong hero stored in the collective memory. Classics include the 1965 cartoon series “Da nao tian gong” (pictured below left) – at the time, the self-confident character was meant to represent the peasant class rebelling against the elite.
In the 1980s and 90s, the character then took on a more and more human form, for example, in the series “Xi you ji” broadcast on CCTV, which prides itself on having depicted almost all 100 chapters of the original novel.
Chinese space companies are only just starting out compared to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. But they are catching up fast. And there are a whole series of Chinese private companies that want to surpass the Americans.
The chances are good. In true Beijing style, the Chinese leadership has declared space travel a key technology. Several dozen companies immediately rush into the market. Officially, these are private companies. But as is so often the case, the government has a hand in it. Even if it is only for the awarding of contracts. Contracts related to China’s national space ambitions are considered particularly lucrative, writes Joern Petring in his analysis.
Today’s column by Johnny Erling is also about taking the top spot: He explains how the Chinese leadership has been vying for years for Beijing’s city center to take the top spot on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Beijing’s imperial north-south axis has now been included – and with it, Tiananmen Square and Mao’s mausoleum. However, Rome’s Via Appia remains number one. Not all roads lead to Beijing yet.
China’s focus on promoting high-tech industries also gives the country’s private space companies a kickstart. One clear sign that Beijing wants to boost the companies is the increasing number of reports in the state media in recent weeks. For example, the official news agency Xinhua reported increased government support. Companies like Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology, better known as iSPACE, will likely benefit from the initiative.
The Beijing-based private space company has set its sights on catching up with leading US companies, particularly Elon Musk’s SpaceX. However, despite years of research, the gap is still considerable. SpaceX has long since evolved into a giant. The company has lucrative contracts with NASA and has already conducted over 300 successful landings with its reusable Falcon 9 boosters.
The technology was first used successfully in 2015 and has proven highly reliable. Some boosters have completed over 20 launches, underlining the efficiency and cost savings through reusability. SpaceX has also successfully launched thousands of Starlink satellites into space, creating a global satellite internet service.
Compared to SpaceX, private Chinese space companies are still in their infancy. “There is still a long way ahead. But we’re catching up fast,” Vice Manager of iSPACE Anna Choi told Xinhua. Six years ago, the Chinese start-up achieved its first breakthrough: It successfully launched a satellite into a 300-kilometer-orbit for the first time with its SQX-1 Y1 rocket.
In December 2023, iSPACE conducted a short test flight with its reusable Hyperbola-2Y rocket. However, it only hovered in the air briefly before returning to the ground. iSPACE plans to put a reusable medium-range rocket into orbit by the end of 2025. Since its foundation in 2016, the company has grown steadily from ten employees to over 400.
iSPACE is not alone. As it became increasingly apparent in recent years that Beijing wants to make the industry a key sector, numerous new companies were founded. Some important names besides iSPACE are:
Another frequently mentioned company is CAS Space. However, as it was spun off from the state-owned CASC group, it is not a purely private player.
The main center of the Chinese private space industry is Beijing. The capital attracts many companies thanks to a wealth of talent and a supportive political environment. In February 2024, Beijing announced plans for a “rocket road” – a dedicated R&D and production hub for commercial space flight. Construction work began last month in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (BDA) in the south-eastern district of Daxing.
Many of China’s space start-ups hope to win contracts in the satellite sector. They aim to gain domestic and international customers to transport satellites into orbit. Like SpaceX or Boeing with NASA, the Chinese companies also aim to partner with the China National Space Administration. Contracts related to China’s national space ambitions, such as supplying the Chinese space station, are considered extremely lucrative.
China has achieved significant achievements in space in recent years. Several successful lunar missions, which have always gone precisely according to plan, show just how capable the state-owned space companies are.
However, the Chinese government is also aware of the limitations of this approach. It recognizes that state-owned companies are innovating in their own sluggish, bureaucratic way. That is why it is increasingly interested in establishing commercial companies as an important part of the space sector – just like the West.
Shortly before the Olympic Games in Paris started, the People’s Republic received a symbolic gold medal in advance. UNESCO unexpectedly honored Beijing’s imperial north-south axis 北京中轴线 with the title of “World Heritage Site.”
The news made big waves. Beijing’s authorities had campaigned for 13 years, while courageous critics protested online. UNESCO decided in Beijing’s favor: Due to the over 700-year history of the Central Axis, because of the unique temples, gates, or bridges, and because of governmental declarations to preserve the historical substance. The 7.8 kilometer-long axis is iconic for the Imperial Palace at its center, the Drum Tower to the north and the Temple of Heaven to the south.
Yet it is not actually a street, but a concept overloaded with philosophical meanings for the design and direction of imperial processional routes. Its conceived architecture is inspired by the civilizational and cultural traditions of the 中 and 和 as well as the Confucian teachings of center and moderation (中庸). Rulers of the three dynasties (Yuan, Ming, Qing) adhered to the axis constructed based on the principles of geomancy (fengshui). At specific times, they traveled along its 15 elements from the Imperial Palace and through its gates to the north to the Drum and Bell Tower. They made a pilgrimage south to the Temple of Agriculture and the Temple of Heaven to the Yongdingmen Gate.
The crux of the matter today is that the historical axis crosses Tiananmen Square, which the rulers of the People’s Republic remodeled in the 1950s, destroying its structure and symmetry beyond recognition. Mao turned it into the world’s largest marching ground for mass parades and ordered the narrow Changan Street outside Tiananmen Gate to be converted into a giant 120-meter-wide boulevard. He also ordered Beijing’s famous city walls to be razed and almost all 32 inner and outer city gates to be demolished.
In the debate on whether China should apply to UNESCO to grant Beijing’s imperial north-south city axis, which runs across Tiananmen Square, the status of a World Heritage Site, Chinese critics also wrote that the People’s Republic had already destroyed the historic square beyond recognition. Moreover, Mao had the most important imperial entrance gate, “Zhonghuamen” (front), built in 1417, demolished by 1959 and flanked both sides of the square with two mammoth buildings: On one side, the Great Hall of the People, the People’s Congress, on the other, the National Museum of China. After Mao died in 1977, his huge mausoleum was erected on the site of the Zhonghuamen Gate.
The designation of the Beijing Axis as a new World Heritage Site includes Tiananmen Square with Mao’s death shrine. After Mao’s death, he was laid out in a crystal coffin in a gigantic mausoleum explicitly built for him in the middle of the square. Despite such alterations, Tiananmen Square is now a World Heritage Site as part of the Central Axis, much to the delight of the Beijing leadership.
UNESCO’s decision was so momentous that China’s National State Administration of Cultural Heritage 国家文物局 meticulously covered it in the August issue of the CC theory magazine Qiushi: “July 27 at 11:15 a.m. local time, the 46th UNESCO session ‘Beijing’s Central Axis. Urban Masterpiece of the Order of an Ideal Capital’ 北京中轴线–中国理想都城秩序的杰作 as a World Heritage Site. At 7.8 kilometers, it is “the longest city axis in the world.”
The state authority wrote even more proudly: “My country now ranks first in the world with 59 World Heritage Sites recognized by UNESCO.” However, this much jubilation was premature, as the UN agency declared 12 other international cultural objects as “World Heritage Sites” on July 27, including the Roman Via Appia, the “Queen of Roads.” Italy ranks first on the UNESCO list with 60 World Heritage sites. China only takes second place.
But the People’s Republic has taken precautions. It nominated 59 candidates for future votes. UNESCO maintains a tentative list on which all countries can submit proposals for the coveted title of “World Heritage Site.” UNESCO first adopted its World Heritage Convention in 1972 and enacted it in 1975. According to UNESCO statistics, there are currently 1223 World Heritage sites across 168 countries. The World Heritage label promises prestige and tourism revenue.
That is why China is the biggest applicant. Even though it only joined the Convention in 1985, its provinces, cities and state cultural authorities have been flooding the UN bodies with applications non-stop. This is also politically motivated. The UNESCO designations serve Beijing as proof of the cultural superiority of its civilization. Party leader Xi Jinping has pledged to fuse China’s traditional culture with Marxism as a new theory on which he wants to build his own special socialism “in the new era.”
According to “thepaper.cn,” Shanghai’s official agency, Xi “called for efforts to take this UNESCO inclusion as an opportunity to further strengthen the comprehensive and systematic protection of cultural and natural heritage and make good use of them to better meet the people’s needs.” Xi has always advocated the inclusion of Beijing’s Axis, China’s state television CCTV reported.
The decision to include the axis not only honors the unique historical buildings, gates and palaces. Tiananmen Square is also part of the axis. Critics on China’s social media formed twice, in 2011 and 2018, calling the square “unworthy and a mockery of a World Heritage Site.” After all, the controversial Tiananmen Square did not exist before 1949. Historically, it was only a kind of outer courtyard or ceremonial passageway for China’s emperors on the way to sacred sites south of Beijing. The so-called China Gate once used to stand in front of Tiananmen Gate as the historic entrance building to the Imperial Palace. Only the emperor and a select few were allowed to pass through. His court had to walk through the galleries on either side.
When it was built in 1417, it was first called 大明门 “Great Ming Gate,” later 大清门 “Great Qing Gate.” The Republic of 1911 christened it Zhonghuamen 中华门 “China’s Gate.” The vernacular just called it 国门, the State Gate. In 1954, Mao, advised by Soviet experts, decided to demolish this gate to expand the square, which was done in 1959. After Mao’s death, the mausoleum was built in 1977 on the site of the former gate. A 100-year-old historical photo shows how imposing and urbanistically invaluable the China Gate used to be before Mao ordered the radical reconstruction.
Liang Sicheng, who was already a world-famous urban planner and architect in Beijing at the time, tried in vain to persuade him to change his mind and asked him to relocate or spare the capital to preserve the imperial city center as a wonder of the world and a “jewel” of humanity. Liang suffered criticism, ridicule and scorn and was only rehabilitated 50 years later, long after his death. His warnings not to destroy the Imperial City proved right.
Today, the critical debate has fallen silent. Beijing’s leadership has turned Tiananmen Square, where it receives its state guests, where it hoists its state flag every morning at sunrise and celebrates national holidays, into the sacrosanct, outwardly political center and landmark of the People’s Republic. Now, it is delighted that it has become a World Heritage Site. The State Administration of Cultural Heritage writes in the CC Magazine that the Central Axis World Heritage Site also includes the square “with all its interlocking elements” 全要素、一次性列入. The “Tiananmen Square, including its buildings” 天安门广场及建筑群 is one of the 15 elements of the Central Axis.
Beijing’s planners long assumed that their wish for the axis to become a World Heritage Site would not come true before 2035. In late 2023, Beijing presented a 140-page public master plan for protecting and managing the Central Axis from 2022 to 2035 for the first time. In 2012, the State Administration of Culture Heritage added the candidacy of the Beijing Axis to the UNESCO candidate list. One year earlier, Shan Jixiang 单霁翔, former head of the cultural authority and director of the Gugong Palace Museum, had submitted the application to the advisory parliament. Today he says: “We waited 13 years.”
He had already campaigned for the preservation and renovation of the historic inner city axis in 2002, when Beijing was preparing to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. The site for the Olympic Village and the two main stadiums for the Games was planned for the north of Beijing as a direct extension of the famous axis. Now, a new meaning was sought for its integration.
Beijing was even willing to seek advice from foreign consulting firms, including the only German company, Frankfurt-based “AS&P Albert Speer und Partner.” It took its project group four months, Johannes Dell, at the time Speer’s China representative and partner, recalls. They then presented their proposal at the public hearing to turn Beijing’s underdeveloped districts in the south into a continuation of the axis and a counterpoint to the Olympic North as a transportation hub centered around rail traffic. “Speer, who presented the concept to the city commission, impressed his listeners,” says architect Sun Zhuo, a translator at Speer’s hearing at the time and now Johannes Dell’s wife. Today, Beijing’s south has become a train station and hub for China’s high-speed rail network, which was not built until after 2008.
The UNESCO shortlist for new international World Heritage Sites includes a particularly ambitious project submitted in 2016 among China’s inflationary 59 applications: It is a listing of all Chinese inland and coastal projects related to the land and water routes of the Silk Road. After Italy reminded the world of the old saying that “all roads lead to Rome” after its Via Appia was declared a World Heritage Site, Beijing seems to have bigger plans. With the boost and help of the UNESCO World Heritage designation, Beijing aims for a future where all roads lead to China thanks to the Silk Road.
The recently released computer role-playing game “Black Myth: Wukong” (picture right), developed in China, is already considered a milestone with its stunning graphics. Sun Wukong, the eponymous monkey king from the famous novel “Journey to the West,” has long been an evergreen in China’s pop culture.
Almost every generation has its own Wukong hero stored in the collective memory. Classics include the 1965 cartoon series “Da nao tian gong” (pictured below left) – at the time, the self-confident character was meant to represent the peasant class rebelling against the elite.
In the 1980s and 90s, the character then took on a more and more human form, for example, in the series “Xi you ji” broadcast on CCTV, which prides itself on having depicted almost all 100 chapters of the original novel.
