China is one of the few countries who take the Biennale’s competition literally. Its contribution to the last edition recast Warburg’s Atlas as a Chinese invention, and this year mixes video gaming, animated print, robotic calligraphy, space rockets, and, in another gesture to imperial primacy, Vitruvian man and Kaspar David Friedrich.

Dream Stream is a dark theatre of “Eastern wisdom” (from which stay away, invader!) encoded to seamlessly fuel a plan economy dystopia with the help of European enlightenment “Lichtung” (no licence to use needed). The result is a mess, of course, but it’s hard to imagine that this was a worry for the country’s soft power policy. What if, as is the case in much contemporary art, China’s appropriation and regurgitation led to domination? Game on.