Demotopia, by Sung Ming Chow

I would like to thank Chow Sung-ming for sharing his political science fiction novel

Demotopia and for inviting me to write a few words about it. I have read many of his

commentaries, but I did not know that he also writes fiction. The difference between fiction and commentary lies in the fact that the former allows for a chorus of voices, a multiplicity of perspectives, whereas the latter hopes that readers will extract the author’s own view—at the very least agreeing with the analysis. I imagine that Chow wishes to explore the question of

democracy through a more “democratic” genre. Form and content should correspond; on this

point, I believe few would disagree.

     Undoubtedly, the themes addressed in this novel are among my own favourite subjects: artificial intelligence, evolution, humanity’s sense of belonging, diaspora, and our own experiences and feelings—along with academia and theory. Yet the author is not seeking affirmation or intellectual comfort. Rather, through the form of a novel that accommodates diverse characters, and through an ordinary yet far-from-simple structure of dialogue, he invites us to search together for answers to the questions of our time: Who are we? Who will we become? What might we still become? This is an ambitious and profoundly serious novel.

     Another distinctive feature is its particular attention to young people—their connections with the world and their responses to it. I suspect this concern stems from the author’s long career in education, a care that cannot easily be erased. After all, when speaking about the future, how can we avoid thinking about the youth? I am reminded of the author’s earlier book “The Melancholy of This Generation: From a Disappearing Hong Kong to the Battle Between Generations” (2015). How does this generation understand the future? Are they truly left with nothing but the only path of “lying flat”?

The novel is written in English. It feels familiar to read, yet at the same time carries a sense

of distance. But when one encounters Tang poetry within it—Du Mu’s “Mooring by the

Qinhuai River”—one cannot help but feel moved:

“The singing girls know not the sorrow of a fallen monarch;

Across the river they still sing Flowers in the Rear Courtyard.”

     Yes, you may have scattered across the world, unable to speak in your own language, yet you

still know where your roots lie. Even if English allows you to connect with the world, it also creates a certain distance. This is not necessarily a bad thing; it may allow for greater calm, or perhaps for the re-assembly of one’s experiences. Yet one remains someone who has crossed the seas.

     The story’s two protagonists possess very different personalities. Engel is more outgoing and proactive in sustaining dialogue. Subin, by contrast, is reserved and introspective, responding to the world more through observation and association. Yet both are overseas students. Their backgrounds differ, but they share the experience of leaving home, studying alone abroad, and searching for their identities. Academia forms the backdrop of the story; it offers them opportunities to present papers and engage in discussions, to think intellectually about these issues. As readers, we are drawn into what feels like an academic symposium alongside them. Yet the walls of the academy cannot isolate the changes occurring in the outside world. As artificial intelligence develops at astonishing speed, might our identities also be flattened and reshaped? And within the framework of the nation-state, might outsiders and Indigenous People encounter similar dilemmas?

     But these questions unfold concretely through love and sexuality. In this way the author cleverly grants academic discussion a dimension of life. What distinguishes us from artificial intelligence is that our languages, theories, concepts, and discourses are deeply tied to our lives and existence. Like architecture, they are part of humanity’s search for a home. Yet our physical place and our spiritual “home” may not coincide. Hannah Arendt, for instance, fled from Germany to New York—a commercial city in the United States—but her intellectual homeland remained ancient Athens.

     At this point, we cannot avoid discussing politics. Politics—especially democratic politics—under the threat and distortion of algorithms is already familiar territory for many readers. Yet an intriguing possibility appears among the erudite and reflective characters in the novel:

could artificial intelligence rehearse possible worlds within the metaverse before decisions

are made? If that were possible, would we not possess a perfect utopia? Would we still fear populism or the election of incompetent leaders? Would we all become perfect voters?

     The danger of such sandbox simulations is that they may cause us to overlook the

relationship between theory and practice. Each person’s practice provides opportunities to revise theory. Precisely for this reason, a democratic society—combined with democratic

deliberation and civic association—may prove stronger than top-down governance, whether it calls itself high-quality democracy or authoritarian rule. Perhaps this is the author’s view. Yet

within the novel the discussion remains open. The author only asks that we be cautious about our worldviews. What worldview one holds is one’s own matter. But as a teacher, as an intellectual, one ultimately hopes that people at least know what worldview they themselves hold.

     In the second chapter, “The Patient and the Banquet”, the characters discuss the German political theorist Carl Schmitt, who once supported Nazism and criticized the democratic system of the Weimar Republic. In the novel, the character Dehao points out that Schmitt’s problem does not lie in the theory itself, but in the crisis of his era. Democracy reveals its flaws in moments of crisis. We see, for instance, that although Donald Trump served as president of a “democratic nation,” many of his actions violated democratic norms.

     Meanwhile, a group of right-wing internet personalities vigorously exercise their “freedom of speech.” This represents a crisis of democracy: democracy and authoritarianism may sometimes produce the same governing outcomes. Could the United States become another

Weimar Republic, descending into a Nazi-like regime? This is an extremely important warning. Viewed in this light, Schmitt may still be regarded as a good physician—but he failed to provide a prescription. Do we have a cure? Does the author offer a remedy?

     Throughout the novel there is an ongoing theme of metaphor. Sometimes metaphors are

misused, but at other times they open new ways for us to understand the world. The

philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s metaphor of the egg reveals that every being contains

potentiality. We are not yet fully defined; we still have the capacity to define ourselves.

Identity is therefore not static but part of an ongoing process of self-definition, and only we

ourselves can undertake this search. At the level of the individual, artificial intelligence,

migration, democracy, and the future all remain matters awaiting our own definitions. To

reject determinism and not abandon our role as agents of action—this seems to be the

author’s hope. I am not sure whether I have truly grasped the author’s intention. Perhaps I

read it this way because I myself carry such sentiments. And that would not be surprising.

    - Tsang Sui-ming,

         Philosophy practitioner, author, blogger, Hong Kong diaspora

Demotopia is an exploration on what the immediate future will bring with the rapid advances in artificial intelligence and large language models in the past few years. It presents a viable path forward especially to those who are disappointed with the current political climate in many of the world’s liberal democracies. 

The main characters are university students trying to find their own calling, yet they are very hopeful of the future and want to explore how they could contribute to the future of democracy. Their lived experiences in the book reflects on many of what the young people are experiencing today, being very concerned about the future of humanity and society. 

The author set forth a plausible way of governance with the advent of artificial intelligence and large language models technologies. As a former software engineer and someone who's very concerned with the rapid development of AI tech, the Swarm AI and its proposed plan for implementation by first being run at a smaller scale in a city is something that I could see being implemented in our world today. 

There are still a lot of technical details that might be infeasible today but in a few years time it’s possible for such experiments to be run in the real world to have AI help strengthen our democracy and its values. 

If you haven’t read as much about political science like me, the book sprinkles in a lot of the most important political science theories of the past two centuries which is a bonus for me.

    - Yong Soon-khen

       Former software engineer, current Effective Altruism practitioner, Malaysia diaspora

My first encounter with Demotopia was not driven by its plot. What held my attention was a recurring question that runs quietly but persistently through the book: in a world increasingly governed by algorithms and data systems, does human participation still matter? 

     Rather than offering a simple technological vision of the future, this fiction situates this question at the center of its political and ethical inquiry. Through seminars, AI scenes, letters, and conversations, it examines how democratic agency might exist under conditions of algorithmic governance. 

This concern comes into focus in the thematic seminar near the end, “Swarm AI/Part II.” When Balala asks whether public expression and voting are still necessary in an era where decentralized AI systems can already predict citizens’ preferences, Subin responds: “Technology doesn’t determine history—collective choices do. 

     Reinvigorating democratic participation with the help of AI, and reaffirming the sovereignty of the people, is our generation’s most vital task.” This moment represents the intellectual core of the novel. The author discusses decentralization, transparency, and public oversight as important conditions for democratic governance in technological systems. Only when decision-making remains contestable and plural can algorithmic tools retain political legitimacy. 

     Subin’s position echoes Hannah Arendt’s concept of “vita activa”. At the same time, Demotopia does not underestimate the difficulty of realizing this ideal. Data monopolies, opaque models, and technical barriers continuously threaten meaningful participation. Structurally, Demotopia moves deliberately across several narrative layers: from the ordinary rhythms of student life, to seminar debates on Western political thought, to AI-mediated dialogues with classical thinkers, and finally to experimental political scenarios. 

     This shifting structure prevents theory from becoming abstract or detached. Instead of isolating political concepts in academic discussion, the novel continuously relocates them within friendships, emotional tensions, institutional pressures, national identities, and personal uncertainty. In this way, political reflection is never separated from lived experience, but constantly tested through relationships, conflicts, and vulnerability. 

     Several characters, especially Subin, Engel, Dehao, and Kongyu, left a lasting impression on me, largely because I found myself trying to understand their inner worlds and values through their personal backgrounds. Their intellectual positions are never detached from their lived circumstances, and much of the novel’s tension emerges from this interaction between thought and experience.

      - Holly Ho

        Social activist, Hong Kong diaspora

Demotopia adopts a restrained and reflective stance toward artificial intelligence. It neither celebrates technological utopianism nor indulges in dystopian pessimism. Instead, it recognizes that learning to work with AI has become a form of civic competence. Refusing technology risks political marginalization. 

Nevertheless, the fiction remains attentive to unresolved dangers: the limited sensory and emotional capacities of AI, the concentration of data and computational power, the imbalances of algorithmic authority, and the weakening of public accountability. These risks will not disappear automatically with technical progress. The core danger lies not in technology itself, but in the institutional arrangements that govern it. 

In this context, Demotopia also invites reflection on Enlightenment narratives of progress and freedom. Modern political thought often assumes a linear sequence: rationality leads to science, science to technology, technology to freedom, and freedom to stable democracy. In the age of AI, this sequence appears increasingly unstable. Algorithmic governance may decentralise authority, but it may also intensify surveillance and control. It may expand participation, or it may narrow political imagination. Rather than offering easy answers, this fiction foregrounds this uncertainty as a defining feature of contemporary politics. 

To be honest, reading Demotopia clarified something I had long sensed but rarely articulated: why I continue to seek meaning through research. I pursue academic work not primarily as a career strategy, but as a way of preserving agency. I do not want my experiences, interpretations, and judgments to be predefined by institutional elites, financial interests, or technical systems. I want to retain the capacity to interpret reality on my own terms, to participate in public discussion, to maintain critical distance from authority, and to intervene when necessary. From this perspective, research becomes a form of active participation. 

The lasting significance of Demotopia does not lie in proposing a perfect political model. It lies in its persistent insistence on individual responsibility. The novel repeatedly asks whether we are still willing to speak, to judge, and to take responsibility for our interpretations. In an age where algorithmic systems grow increasingly powerful, sustained reflection itself becomes a political stance. Maybe my decision to continue pursuing an academic path is rooted in this conviction – not in order to join an elite, but in order to avoid having others speak on my behalf. 

In this sense, Demotopia is not a manual for governance. It is a reminder that democratic life ultimately depends on the courage to remain intellectually present.

     - Scarlett Sun 

       Student Activist, China diaspora 

When I first heard that Sung-ming was going to write a novel about AI and contemporary youth, I assumed it would be nothing more than a thought experiment confined to his study, and I did not pay much attention. To my surprise, however, the scholar approached the project with remarkable seriousness. The final work spans 120,000 words and has been successfully published in English. Yet what he produces is not a novel in the usual sense—or at least not one that can be casually flipped through while waiting for a bus or read alongside a snack. Like Sung-ming himself, it carries a strong sense of ambition and places considerable intellectual demands on its readers. 

     The story is set in a university in V Port, where the main characters come from different cities and countries. Each carries with them traumatic memories from their places of origin, and in this new environment they attempt to reconstruct their identities and lives. Readers will find the cities as thinly veiled, metaphorical constructions familiar; indeed, the author does not make much effort to conceal them. These young people gradually find themselves drawn into and surrounded by a system called Utopi-AI. Old relationships, values, and worldviews begin to disintegrate, while the choices that lie ahead become increasingly ambiguous and fraught with contradiction… 

     Throughout the novel, the characters engage in endless debates, asking questions such as: What matters more—freedom or justice, procedural justice or substantive justice? In this fragmented age, can truth still serve as a reliable public foundation? Even after centuries of refinement, institutions have failed to prevent the most severe abuses of power—so where, then, is the true path to democracy? Is it still worth pursuing? As AI rapidly permeates decision-making, making it ever more precise and efficient, are humans becoming freer, or are we entering a more nuanced form of control? 

     The author offers no definitive answers to these grand questions. Instead, he allows them to ferment among the characters, leading each onto different paths. Some are gradually absorbed by Utopi-AI, surrendering their judgment and agency to algorithms; others withdraw into detached observation, retreating into a kind of powerlessness; still others undergo inner rupture, attempting to redefine their relationship with themselves and the world. Their trajectories mirror, in many ways, the reality we face today. 

     The novel does not arrive at a neatly resolved ending. When you close the book, you may feel that the story could have to end only this way. Yet it is precisely within this sense of incompletion that the reader, almost unknowingly, undergoes an ongoing exercise in thought— political, philosophical, ethical, and concerned with freedom. 

     Do not stop thinking—perhaps this is the most important message the novel seeks to convey. (Machine translated from Chinese)

     - So Mei-chi 

       Journalist, Hong Kong diaspora