Huxley’s masterpiece, which had more to say about materialism, mood-control, mass-distraction, and social fragmentation than Orwell’s, offers a new kind of insight into what is really happening in twenty-first-century China. With its bliss-inducing drug “soma” and sensuous entertainments known as “feelies,” which provided the sort of engrossing distraction now offered by video games and iPods, Brave New World’s perspective adds a new dimension to understanding the durability of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a protean ruling party.