In this episode, we analyze the sentence "Neo-China arrives from the future" from Nick Land's 1994 essay "Meltdown." For Land, Capital is an autonomous intelligence from the future and China is the privileged site of arrival due to its lack of Western moral constraints. We cover China's Special Economic Zones, Land's predictions of Western decline versus Eastern acceleration, and the concept of Sino-futurism. Looking at the data, we find that Land's concept here is surprisingly prescient and accurately predictive; given the mention of China in "The Dark Enlightenment" and his own move to to Shanghai, this idea is arguably one of his most serious, long-term, and high-conviction ideas. I offer one counter-hypothesis on why I think China might not remain the privileged site of technocapital acceleration in the medium-term.
00:00 Intro 01:45 "Arriving from the future" 04:02 Why China? Western Moral Drag 10:15 Why this sentence is underrated 14:08 China in "The Dark Enlightenment" 18:08 A closer look at Chinese Acceleration 22:15 Sinofuturism
