National Policy

National Policy is a long-form alternate-history military novel serialized on Qidian by the web author Shanshuo (real name Wang Yu). Begun around 2009, it runs to a scale in the tens of millions of characters (platform counts vary; commonly cited figures range from over six million to more than ten million), making it one of his representative works of military writing. Set against the development of contemporary China and the Chinese nation, the novel imagines the accidental emergence of a mysterious substance that breaks through existing technological bottlenecks, setting off developments in energy, materials, defense industries and other fields and giving the country a chance at leapfrog development in a short time. Around this central thread, the novel adopts a global perspective: from high-level strategic planning, diplomatic negotiation and counterbalancing, to frontline military standoffs and local conflicts, to industrial upgrading, financial maneuvering and covert intelligence warfare, multiple threads interweave as it depicts a rising power's difficult process of seeking room and reshaping rules within the existing international order; it also shows how technological breakthroughs feed back into national strength, how that growing strength changes the external environment, and how new pressures and tests then arise. The book carries a strong flavor of national narrative and deductive imagination, and readers often call it a "deduction record of a great power's rise"; the author's visions of certain technological directions and international situations have also been repeatedly compared and discussed by readers against later reality. Note that this is a fictional novel: its policies, technologies and events are artistic imaginings and should not be taken as a basis for real-world judgment.