Yes, same guy. Please keep in mind that the rules on what reality is acceptable or not come down from Minitrue and they may change without prior warning. Look, I am speculating here as to the motives but the words, the phrases, the intonations, they all ring true in my ears. His characters sound and walk and talk as if they are copied down from the pages of Pravda, I kid you not.
Have you read it in Chinese? Or are you projecting your impressions of the USSR on 3BP? Have you thought that what rings to you like “authoritarian communist China” may just be “authoritarian for centuries China”?
For all I know you may be right on the writer, but judging the translated work of a guy from a country half a world away from your clichés on another country (I will assume you neither lived in nor speak/read the language) sounds a bit like a stretch to me.
