Mandarinate

The Mandarinate, is the dominant power in the dystopian cyberpunk future world of the Interface Zero roleplaying game.

Background
In 2020, the Chinese Communist Party was overthrown by the "New Mandarins", a revolution of million of young men who lacked wives due to a shortage of women brought about by decades of CCP population control policy. This revolution occurred during a time of crisis in the world, of environmental disasters brought about by climate change, geopolitical tensions due to inter-state wars, and the withdrawal of American military forces from overseas by Washington DC. Replacing the CCP was a government established by the bureaucracy which had led the revolution, who created a meritocratic bureaucratic state.

Needing an outlet for the aggression of the millions of bachelor men and a need for new wives, the Bachelor Wars began. Starting in 2024, China began to invade several neighboring countries, starting with Korea (which had unified the peninsula earlier). Korea fell in two weeks after which it experienced the Chinese occupation which was done with a light touch. China then replicated the success of that campaign with invasions of Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Mongolia, and Cambodia. In each case with the assistance of collaborators among the population and business groups, the invasion quickly overwhelmed the local resistance. Taiwan had been annexed years before the Mandarinate was established.

The Chinese Mandarinate nearly doubled in size in 2030 due to a series of events. In the year before in 2029 there were two regional nuclear wars. The first between Israel and the states of Pakistan and Iran, which devastated the Fertile Crescent, destroying the major cities of several neighboring Muslim states, and destroying most of Israel. Several days later another nuclear war happened between India and Pakistan, which lasted 24 hours resulting in half a billion dead, Pakistan finished as a nation, and the loss of Delhi and Madras for India.

For the first time in centuries the world population declined. Brought about by sea levels that had been rising for years and the radioactive fallout, resulting in vast crop failures, cities becoming ghost towns due to the lack of clean drinking water, and the death of millions more. In a couple of years, 1.3 billion had died from the nuclear war or its aftermath. China took advantage of the global crisis and invaded Russia. The Chinese rapidly advanced and seized most of Asiatic Russia before halting their offensive after a desperate Russia joins the European Union (which then became the Eurasian Union).

China is also the leading space power on Earth, being the 1st to land humans on Mars in 2043 and have become world leaders in many fields of science and technology. Brazil and the European Union are the closest geopolitical and economic rivals that China has, with the United States having fragmented into several rival states after a civil war in the 2060s. Sometime after the Bachelor Wars ended, the city-state of Singapore became part of the Mandarinate. Chinese occupation forces withdrew from Korea in 2040 and eventually withdrew from all other conquests except in Asiatic Russia where they are still fighting against a Russian insurgency.

Government
The government of the Mandarinate consists of 35 Ministries, which continuously compete with each other in the various districts and at the national level for power and prestige. Regions (and the Mandarinate) each have councils with representatives from each of the ministries which mediate between the ministries at the regional and national levels.

It chooses the best among the citizenry are chosen during their childhood to join one of the ministries which run their society. They become functionaries (lowest rank), junior Mandarins, and the brightest and most talentd, senior Mandarins.

Society
The state has a policy of population control in which it gives families gender quotas based on the demographic and societal needs of China. In addition they've created a caste of genderless eunuchs whom are engineered to lose their gender identity once puberty hits which curbs the growth of the population.

Cities throughout China have zones whose living styles and architecture represent previous eras, as well as modern zones where the people work and live in a late 21st century district. The countryside has the old ways preserved and the government selects those whom are unable to serve the Mandarinate in any other way that is useful to live and work as peasants.

Technology
The Mandarinate has developed advanced technology, equal or superior to what most of the rest of the world possesses, including;


 * Nanotechnology
 * Interplanetary Spacecraft
 * Power Armor
 * Genetic Engineering
 * Mecha
 * Directed Energy Weeapons (Lasers and Particle Beams)
 * Rail Guns
 * Gyro Rocket Firearms
 * VTOL Vehicles
 * Cybernetics
 * Androids
 * Hybrid Humans (spliced with animal DNA)
 * Simulacra (vat-grown humans)