Manifesto

宣言

Sinofuturism is an invisible movement — a spectre already embedded into a trillion industrial products, a billion individuals, and a million veiled narratives. It is a movement, not based on individuals, but on multiple overlapping flows. Flows of populations, of products, and of processes.

中华未来主义（Sinofuturism）是某种不可见的运动。某种业已嵌入万亿工业产品、十亿个体及百万隐性叙述的幽灵。作为一种运动，它并非建立在个体上，而基于多种重叠的流动途径。人口、产品与程序的流动。

Because Sinofuturism has arisen without conscious intention or authorship, it is often mistaken for contemporary China. But it is not. It is a science fiction that already exists.

由于中华未来主义的兴起并非源于具体的意向或作者，它经常被误解为当代中国的产物。但事实并非如此。它是一种已经存在的科幻虚构。

This video essay is a retroactive manifesto for Sinofuturism, combining historical fantasy, documentary melodrama, and social realism, with Chinese cosmologies.

本视频论文是中华未来主义的回溯式宣言，将历史的狂想、纪录片式的情节剧、社会主义现实主义与中式宇宙观结合起来。

Although China only recently became the factory of the world, this is only the latest incarnation of the Chinese work ethic. It is a work ethic based on farm labour and large families, in an agrarian society prone to natural disasters, within a Confucian belief system that values hard work as the only insurance against a turbulent world.

中国最近才成为世界工厂，而这不过是中国工作伦理的最新呈现形式。这种工作伦理根植于易受自然灾害影响的农耕社会，建立在农业劳动与大家族的基础上，源于儒家信仰体系的内部，在这种体系中，唯有努力工作才能对抗动荡的世界。

Multiple stereotypes of this Eastern 'Other' are everywhere. Whether Chinese Olympic athletes are branded as 'robots', or Chinese students or tourists are likened to 'swarms', or Shenzhen factory workers are criticised for 'flooding the marketplace', the subtext is the same. It is the dehumanisation of the individual into a nameless, faceless mass.

关于这一东方式“他者”的陈词滥调无处不在。无论是奥运会上被标签化为“机器人”的中国运动员，抑或被比作“蜂群”的中国学生或游客，或因“涌入市场”而备受批评的深圳工厂工人，其中的言外之意具有某种一致性——将个体去人性化，使之沦为一种无名、无个性的大众。

On the other hand is the Orientalist aesthetic narrative, where China is the exotic other, eternally unknowable, mysterious, powerless yet seductive.

另一方面，存在某种东方主义的审美叙述：中国被视为某种异域的他者，永远不为人所知，神秘、无力而充满诱惑。

But rather than resisting cultural cliches, Sinofuturism embraces seven key stereotypes associated with China. These are its guiding principles: Computing, Copying, Gaming, Studying, Addiction, Labour, and Gambling.

不过，中华未来主义并非致力于对抗文化方面的陈词滥调，而凸显了7种与中国相关的关键刻板印象。基本原则如下：计算、复制、游戏、学习、上瘾、劳动、赌博。

At a material level, it is already everywhere: in architecture, in the products and technologies that we use every day.

在物质的层面，它已经无所不在：日常生活中我们所接触、使用的建筑、产品与技术。

However, I propose something more radical.

不过，我要谈更激进的东西。

I propose that Sinofuturism is in fact a form of Artificial Intelligence: a massively distributed neural network, focused on copying rather than originality, addicted to learning massive amounts of raw data rather than philosophical critique or morality, with a post-human capacity for work, and an unprecedented sense of collective will to power.

我认为，中华未来主义实际是一种人工智能的形式，广泛传播的神经网络，聚焦于复制而非原创性，习于研究大量的原始数据，而非哲学批判或道德，具有一种后人类式的工作能力，以及前所未有的集体性权力意志。

Rather than resisting stereotypes, Sinofuturism embraces cliches, many of which are reinforced by both East and West. Just as Afrofuturists answered the historical problem of slavery by declaring themselves as post-human super robots, Sinofuturism answers the Chinese problems of physical servitude, intellectual conformity, and computational OCD, by openly embracing Artificial Intelligence.

中华未来主义并非对抗陈词滥调，而是吸纳它们，其中许多陈词滥调被东方与西方强化了。非洲未来主义者们通过宣称自己是后人类式的超级机器人以回应奴隶制的历史问题，与此相似，中华未来主义通过公开拥护人工智能而回应身体的奴役、思想的同流与计算强迫症的中国式问题。

In computer science, one of the most promising routes to developing AI is a combination of neural networks and machine learning. Here, an interconnected mesh of programmed neurons learn from sets of data based on real-world phenomena. Engineers declare that the results of neural networks are always surprising, especially in competition against humans.

在计算机科学中，发展人工智能最有前景的方法之一即为神经网络与机器学习的结合。在此，一个由被编程的神经元所组成的交互网络从一系列基于现实世界之现象的数据中学习。工程师宣称，神经网络的结果永远是令人惊奇的，尤其当它与人类竞争之时。

For a long time, grand masters of the ancient game of Go considered themselves unbeatable against AI players. But in March 2016, the AlphaGo AI developed by Google DeepMind beat Go world champion Lee Sedol by four games to one. Most surprising was Lee's comment about some of AlphaGo's inhuman moves; Lee said he witnessed moves so profoundly unconventional that only a program could conceive of them.

很久以来，古代围棋大师自认为不可被人工智能选手战胜。但在2016年3月，由谷歌DeepMind研发的人工智能阿尔法狗（AlphaGo）以4:1的比分击败了世界冠军李世石。最令人惊讶的是，李世石对非人类阿尔法狗棋路的评论——他发现对手的棋路如此离经叛道，唯有程序才能构思出这样的棋路。

This essential unknowability of the AI to the human, of the mystique of a consciousness beyond conventional understanding, is exactly the same 'Other' identified in  Orientalism. It is this oppositional 'Other' which Sinofuturism identifies with, reorienting the technological narrative in a way that the nameless, faceless mass of Chinese labour becomes a collective body.

人类对人工智能，以及超乎一般认知范围的意识秘密一无所知，而这一根本性的无知正与东方主义中的“他者”别无二致。正是这一中华未来主义所定义的对立性“他者”，以无名、无个性的中国劳动大众沦为集体性身体的方式，重新规定了技术的叙事。