The main character Jiang Miao has coworkers of various non-Chinese descent, like her work bestie who is of Japanese ancestry, and most of the side/mob characters are actually not Chinese or Asian based on their names and descriptions. The empire is portrayed as being quite diverse in terms of ethnicities. This is unusual for a Chinese interstellar novel and for a Chinese romance novel. However, it seems like it's all on the surface as none of these characters appear to retain or express much heritage or culture based on their ancestry beyond naming conventions, and I can't tell if that's a deliberate move by the author to showcase that the future is such a melting pot that everyone ascribes to one homogenous interstellar culture, or if it's a superficial attempt at token diversity. I guess the fact that I'm questioning if it's one or the other still means that the story in general is deeper than most.

The story goes out of its way to show that Jiang Miao has her choice of superior genetic matchups, which includes men of various ethnicities. On the surface that seems great (even if she of course ultimately chooses the Chinese guy) so you might be tempted to think that the story is showcasing diversity and how the future is racism-free!

But that kind of loses its meaning when the story revolves around being bred by the government to produce genetically superior children (of which the heroine approves and is excited to be a part of!), with pity and stigma attached to being born outside this program. Like, I can't praise a story for racial diversity when it's endorsing the idea that people with health problems, neurodivergence, or mental illness have less or no value because they contribute less or not at all to society, and are a burden because they suck up resources. (I'm not exaggerating. There are several casual references to and implications of this in the story, and then an explicit paragraph about it at one point. Again, scroll down to the boldprinted segment for a direct quote from chapter 49.)

The state-run genetic optimization program is an optional "privilege" afforded to those who fulfill certain requirements like an income threshold and I forget what else, probably education level and how elite your job is (which are of course both tied to income). So, like, you don't have to do it. But if you can, most people do, and those who do are regarded with envy and excitement by those who can't. Reproduction through the program is incentivized with major financial benefits from the government based on the child's ability to score well in school and progress through higher tiers of education—which the story and the MC regard as a good thing, and the story never hints at anything negative about this, and man, I had so many thoughts about how commonly abused this system (and millions of children) must be, but the story never goes there and I'm not getting into it further here. I guess in the future, child abuse and greed and s*upidity are mostly eliminated due to the increasing genetic superiority of humankind, I speculate not at all in the least bit sarcastically.

Since this is a Chinese story and an interstellar one at that, the military is of course glamorized and glorified. And in this particular story, gene-optimized children with at least one military parent are partly owned by the state—pardon me, I mean, they are required by the state to attend special junior high military school rather than normal junior high, and when they complete military training, actually enlisting in the military is technically* optional. Most, of course, choose to enlist in the military, since the military is put on a pedestal and is afforded the highest pay and prestige of all.

* The child is forced to sign a service agreement upon enrollment and if they fail to uphold that agreement upon graduation, they are harshly punished for it: "'If the obligation period is not fulfilled after graduation, there are not only economic penalties, but the citizen rating will also be significantly reduced.'" (Chapter 24)

But a child can choose not to attend military school in the first place! In which case, the child is given a huge fine for not attending, which they are obligated to pay off unless their parent/caregiver chooses to pay it for them. Yes, an underage child will carry the burden of state-enforced economic penalties unless a parent pays it off for them, and given the way parenthood is emotionally and psychologically desensitized, distant, and financially motivated in the future, I'm pretty sure most parents would just let their child be penalized because it's none of their business.

But but but! Fees/fines/economic penalties can be avoided based on the child's "scores" and "physique" at birth and the caregiver's observation during their growth, in which case the caregiver can basically send a petition to the military for an exception for the child to opt out of military school, in which case the fine is smaller... but they're still fined.

The fact that the government shapes (and controls) so much of its population's reproduction and children, and social attitudes toward both as well as the concept of family VS "independence" is a detail that is sort of tangentially brought up a couple of times later in the story and seems like it's building toward something that is both bigger and glaringly obvious. And that sort of veiled semi-criticism and analysis of a fictional government is very rare in Chinese web novels. (I'm thinking perhaps this is a Taiwanese novel OR perhaps it gets away with it because it is more subtle/less overt, and/or the world and government are not as explicitly Chinese-coded and maybe one of the other empires or whatever out there is more explicitly Chinese with traditional Chinese values and will probably be styled as superior... I'm hedging my bets on the latter.)

(I actually have a whole lot to say about the presentation of "filial piety and traditional family relationships VERSUS super 'independence', 'selfishness', and zero filial piety with the complete erasure of family' = a very thinly-veiled criticism of Western society and its negative influence on traditional Chinese values" but this freaking review-turned-critique-essay is long enough just about the eugenics aspect.)

There is some gruesomely heavy-handed backstory explaining the advent of artificial uteruses for male pregnancy, and it involves some kind of historical disaster that reduced that human population and/or female population and/or lowered fertility rates, I forget exactly because it was so cliché, but this meant that women became valued commodities ens*aved, r*ped, traded, and fought over, reduced to nothing but childbearing machines. Then there was some kind of revolution and blah blah blah, eventually artificial uteruses were created both out of necessity and as a means of restoring female autonomy and assuring absolute gender equality.

And that's why in the future, there are no more gender norms (supposedly) and tangentially the concept of "family" is a historical footnote that is regarded as an exotic oddity and social taboo, to the point that Jiang Miao works very hard to conceal her mindset and is ashamed/scared when others question her reaching out once a month during college and once or twice after graduating to her biological mother (who by then had pretty much cut off communication except for generic polite replies when the MC reached out), since Jiang Miao's attempting to maintain contact could be interpreted as unhealthy dependence and abnormal fixation upon a parental figure, meaning she is mentally unfit and may no longer be eligible for the gene optimization program or to hold her job.

And while I'd really love for Jiang Miao to realize how messed up that is, she instead reluctantly realizes that social norms and values are different in the future and the future is where she now lives, so her parents were simply friendly caretakers raising an infant into a productive member of society, for which they will receive government benefits based on her performance, and once she was an adult, they need no longer maintain contact as they should all be satisfied: the parents raised a good offspring, and the adult offspring is now fully independent and living their own separate life.

Considering how much of this story is both subtle and complex, the dramatically barbaric and yet still generic history involving the mass ens*avement of women for the sole purposes of reproduction comes across as a clunky, clumsy effort to justify male pregnancy via artificial uteruses. Just like the wholly unnecessary "over 25% of test tube babies were worthless because most of them had autism and the rest had depression or other mental health disorders so that's why reproduction is now solely carried out in the womb of a human, be it natural in female or artificial in male" (once again, scroll down to the boldprint for the exact quote I keep referencing), it is completely unnecessary to have this s*upid period of history as the reason for current gender equality and male pregnancy. It could have just as reasonably and easily been "there was a still-generic disaster that decimated the human population and/or fertility and so medical technology focused on means to deal with that, leading to the development of artificial uteruses and male pregnancy, and incidentally when men experienced what it's like to be pregnant, great strides were made in gender equality, leading to our modern utopian society."

I hate it when stories go for dramatic shock value to "justify" a development that didn't have to be dramatic or shocking. It comes across as cheapening actual violence against women by inventing a supposedly utopian future where women are "free" from being "forced" to have children while men now have the option to become pregnant, but it came at the cost of that grossly extreme yet glossed-over violence and justifying the culling of anyone with depression or other mental illness or neurodivergence. Okay, enough soapboxing about that, back to soapboxing about eugenics.

Despite the CP happily agreeing to remain ignorant about the baby's gender so they can be surprised at birth and Jiang Miao supposedly being fine with either gender, she is openly disappointed when Yan He gives birth to a boy. Yan He is upset by this and questions her about it, and she says: "'I just actually kind of wanted a daughter, to buy her little dresses, dress her up every day. Sigh, this lifestyle is gone now.'" (Chapter 59)

"Although gender equality had been achieved, and genetic optimization was reducing the differences between boys and girls, some things were inherent.

For example, most girls naturally liked dressing up and shopping, while most boys were quite impatient with that." (Chapter 59)

... look, I was trying hard to give her the benefit of the doubt that her 21st century prejudices were showing, but no, instead the author and story itself have to emphasize that stereotypical binary gender norms are genetically inherent. Wow. The story just undid 59 chapters' worth of its own progressive work in 2 sentences.

Then it goes on to not just shoot itself in the foot again but blow both legs off immediately in the next chapter, after Yan He accuses Jiang Miao of gender-based favoritism and says he ain't allowin' any of that with their child, and the story goes on to again emphasize strict gender stereotypes as genetic.

"Indeed, there was a trend of favoring girls over boys in the Gita Republic. This was mainly because caregivers found raising boys too exhausting!

Despite achieving equality and genetic enhancement, there were almost no differences between adult men and women except for a slight difference in physical strength. But when they were still children, the difference was still significant!

Most girls could really be quiet and well-behaved, while boys always caused chaos. By the time they reached seven or eight years old, it was simply a disaster." (Chapter 60)

The story goes on to say that the abandonment rate for boys is very high and many parents would just give up and dump custody on the government, forsaking those tempting financial benefits because they're fed up caring for too-energetic troublesome boys by the age of 7 or 8, and then abandonment rates spike again when the boys hit puberty.

"... [Jiang Miao] had reflected on this phenomenon of abandoning boys, which was completely opposite to her motherland in ancient Earth times.

After achieving equality, surname rights were no longer exclusively for males. Therefore, regardless of whether they were boys or girls, they could both fulfill the purpose of reproduction and continuation.

After men lost the exclusive right to surnames, when everyone was treated as independent individuals, the advantages such as delicacy, patience, gentleness, and early maturity that women possessed from childhood became more prominent, making them the preferred gender for caregivers." (Chapter 60)

Yep, you read that right. Those with two X chromosomes are from childhood naturally more delicate, patient, and gentle, with early maturity, compared to the crazy nasty exuberance and juvenile troublemaking that a Y chromosome presents.

But let me reassure you that gender equality and gender stereotypes are largely gone in the future! It's just that girls are naturally quieter, daintier, gentler, and easier to raise than boys, and so boys are frequently abandoned by their caregivers and the entire population has a preference for raising girls instead of boys. Somehow all this boy-abandonment stuff doesn't at all affect society or attitudes toward men and boys, or the men and boys themselves. But gender equality!!!!

It's not a reverse harem. But the MC definitely had some pursuers. Before the ending, I thought she would accept the original Yan He but she still chose the ML. This is 1vs1.

Even if it's like that, she did allow to get her egg fertilized with Yan He's sperm. Very confusing so better read. In summary, by the end of the novel, the ML and orig Yan He became close in the war that the ML suggested to the MC to let his sperm fertilize her egg because they thought he died in the war. The ML will be the one who will get pregnant (it's like the ML became the surrogate) It was funny because when the ML was pregnant, Yan He came back. He was so happy to know he has a baby with the MC while the ML is miserable because of his mood swings and nausea and vomiting due to pregnancy. 😅

Unlike their previous relationship development based on mutual will, this progression where you manipulated a person, put them in a situation where they lost all their assets and power, and "compensate", I'm raging so hard I wish this wasn't a HEA lololol. I only feel pity for Jiang Miao and Jiang Rui. At the end, they made the ML OP where the protag couldn't ever see a genuine standing on equal grounds despite the better political background of the "new world". If Jiang Miao was truly rational and pursued material and social class, I could accept it. But from beginning to end, she only did her best to be able to accept new life from her timetraveling with positivity and sincerity. Now, all she was is pulled into a new worldview by the (more morally upright but still) manipulative upper classes lololol. I feel so betrayed. I hope she never get with him, but that won't happen. 2 stars, for the invested feelings.