[3] Author David Der-wei Wang described most of the novel as "an instructional political treatise where the virtues of various modes of government are lucidly debated.
[6] The novel begins in 1962, or year of Confucius 2513,[7] and shows a 50th anniversary celebration of a Shanghai-based reform movement in which a World Expo and peace treaty signings occur.
Kong states that the stages are: preparation, autonomy of various districts, unification of all of China, building things and producing goods, competing with other countries, and finally becoming the global superpower.
[12] This section includes debates between the characters Huang Keqiang (黄克強) and Li Qubing (李去病), who discuss whether China should experience a revolution or be reformed.
[13] Huang Keqiang's father, an academic from Guangdong, sent him and Li Qubing to Oxford University; due to the Hundred Days Reform they do not immediately return to China, and they experience anti-Chinese sentiment from the Europeans.
David Wang stated that the absence of the middle portions of the storyline means that the novel does not have its "progressive narrative" or "the historical time to make the future accessible and intelligible.
[14] David Wang stated in Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849-1911 that Liang Qichao had changed his vision of how a new China would be established, and that this and several other factors resulted in a halt in the novel's development.