History Literature / TheBearAndTheDragon

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: The book depicts China's then One Child Policy as more draconian than it was, with cops willing to kill a foreign diplomat to enforce it. In reality, couples caught breaking the law generally faced fines, and the government had collected billions from such fines. While forced abortions did occur, they mostly happen in rural regions where residents were too poor to pay the fine and the rule of law is weak, and rarely in major cities like the book due to the greater chance of public backlash. In fact, one forced abortion case in 2012 brought such negative publicity that it contributed to the scrapping of the policy in 2015.

** The book portrays Russia as becoming a NATO member essentially overnight. To put it mildly, this would be ''extremely'' unlikely to happen in real life. Joining NATO is a lengthy process even when everybody involved would like the country involved to become a member, for purely administrative, diplomatic, and military reasons if nothing else (weapons standardization to ensure that the new allies' armies are compatible, for one example). In this case, the process would be made much more complicated by the fact that the nation trying to join is ''Russia''; even if the original members of the alliance accepted the "Russia isn't the Soviet Union anymore" argument, many of the newer members (such as Poland and the Baltic states) are formerly occupied nations that retain huge security concerns about Russia to this day.[[note]]An example can be seen in Sweden and Finland's attempts to join NATO following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Turkey, a NATO member, deliberately blocked their ascension for political leverage, such as demanding the countries extradite Turkish dissidents purported to be terrorists. As of late March-early April 2023, however, Turkey has finally approved Finland's accession to NATO, though it and Hungary are, as of the same date, still delaying Sweden's application.[[/note]]

** Fang Gan gradually grows into this role, partly because he's the only other member of the Politburo willing to listen to Qian. He suspects early on that the diplomatic incident that killed the Vatican ambassador will backfire if the Chinese don't manage it, and is a voice of caution in the lead-up to the war repeatedly warning his peers of the consequences if it should go badly.

* ArtisticLicenseTechnology: The book claims that Chinese characters are stored as image files inside computers, rather than digital standards such as Unicode.

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: The book depicts China's then One Child Policy as more draconian than it was, with cops willing to kill a foreign diplomat to enforce it. In reality, couples caught breaking the law generally faced fines, and the government had collected billions from such fines. While forced abortions did occur, they mostly happen in rural regions where residents were too poor to pay the fine, and rarely in major cities like the book due to the greater chance of public backlash. In fact, one forced abortion case in 2012 brought such negative publicity that it contributed to the scrapping of the policy in 2015.
* ArtisticLicenseLinguistics: The book claims that Chinese characters are stored as image files inside computers, rather than digital standards such as Unicode.