Sino Block

Sino-Cit airspace in 2127

The Sinos are one of the powers of the 22nd century, born out of post-war China. As well as two (previously three) megacities, the Sino Block has a space empire and is a joint menace to both Mega-City One and East-Meg Two. It rubs up against the notoriously hellish Radlands of Ji.

The specific details of life in the Sino Block is vague. We know there's an elected mayor and the governing power is the People's Justice Ministry.

Known settlements include:

• Sino-City One (nuked out)
• Sino-Cit (formerly Sino-City Two)
• Hong Tong
• Zhang Heng lunar colony
• "Subjugated Region of the One Rightful Ideology" (Tibet)

History

Sino Block representative at the UN

The Sino Block existed before the Atomic Wars, and in 2050 claimed the Shi-Sen Territories on the moon. This land would be rented out to mining companies. It was a voice condemning President Booth's invasion of the Middle East. Booth and his advisors didn't take their threat seriously.

The Sino-Sov-Megacity Wars raged in the 2070s as a result of the post-nuclear chaos. Open conflict had ended by the end of the century, but the Sinos quietly armed separatist militias along the Sov Block borders.

Hong Tong

Hong Tong would come under a power-sharing agreement between the Sino Block and Brit-Cit, with the Sinos officially declaring the city "contaminated" with capitalism and crime, and its trade with capitalist powers a 'regrettable' economic measure. Crime was allowed to run riot in the city, with the rest of the block's 'criminal element' pushed there, on the assumption that this would leave the other Sino-Cities free of such things. (The amount of money Hong Tong's rampant capitalism generated is also used to fund the rest of the block)

Future enemies Devlin Waugh and Lord Benjamin Hekt first met at a 2093 Mah-Jong tournament held at the Shanghai Hilton.

Hondo's Daisuke Toyama opened a factory in one of the Sino cities to benefit from cheaper labour. When he wouldn't pay a bung to the 707 Triad, they sent the assassin Stan Lee after him.

The Sinos formed a space empire including the lunar city of Zhang Heng and various offworld colonies. In the 22nd century, they formed a political alliance with the Klegg Empire and established jointly-run "peace forts" on their mutual border. (Neither Sino nor Klegg soldier seemed to like the other) During ther brief glasnost period between Mega-City One and East-Meg Two, McGruder and Traktorfactori agreed to joint operations to restrict Sino expansion in space.

In 2112, Sino soldiers detected Cassandra Anderson's mission to Tibet and attempted to intercept her. She and her allies took them out, leaving her feeling as if she'd "defiled" the area.

Sino-City One was overrun by zombies during Judgement Day and wiped out by nuclear fire. The surviving Sino-City Two would become renamed Sino-Cit in common parlance. The Sinos had stayed out of the global Justice Department summit over Judgement Day, declining any foreign assistance, and were not happy that the foreign powers had nuked one of their cities.

In 2115, MC-1's Psi Division predicted a major crisis in eighteen months or less involving Sino-Cit and the Sovs. Despite the concern, this never happened.

In the same year, the Sinos were part of a multinational mission to Mars with their rivals MC-1, Brit-Cit, and the Sovs, who all feared the aliens that once lived there were returning. The Sino Block's top linguist, Danni Khan, and her cyber-augmented monkey Adam was part of the eight-man team. Danni was the first person cut down, attacked by a Martian robot that drained her mind and killed her, while Adam would end up crucial to stopping the Anunnaki.

Unable to properly battle the Kleggs in the Spiral Arm with the Sinos in the way, in 2116 MC-1 sent a Corps fireteam to carry out a 'false flag' massacre a peace fort and convince both sides the other had done it. This mission failed.

Under the Global Lunar Partnership Treaty, Sino-Cit became one of multiple city-states involved in Luna-1. They sent Judges and agreed to protect its independence, but really hoped to gain influence over lunar resources.

Sino delegates were at the ill-fated InterDep conference of 2117.

The Herod entity tour through Nu-Beijing in 2121, killing people based on their zodiacal energy.

By the early 2120s, Sino-Cit was a world leader in arms and wardroid tech.

Chess grandmaster Cho Yen Lhow died in 2122, costing the Sinos the next few years of chess championships.

Liu Chan Yeun/Johnny Woo deployed in MC-1

In 2123, Sino-Cit sent their undercover man Inspector Liu Chan Yeun to Mega-City One as hitman "Johnny Woo" to ensure a gang war in "Sino-Town" between the Meg-born gangs and Hong Tong invaders would end with Hong Tong on top. Woo was captured by Dredd but had to be let go as he had diplomatic immunity. Two years later, Woo and the Sino undercover division would team up with Dredd to bust a 'chop shop' operating in Hong Tong, which surgically altered Mega-City One criminals to escape the law. Sino Judges took the shop owner Uncle Ho away for sentencing.

Sino-Cit would not get involved in an attempted East-Meg takeover of Luna-1. Afterwards, the Treaty was revoked.

Chief Judge Wong attended the Global Justice Summit in 2126. He was poisoned by the last Judda and pressured Hershey to hand over Dredd so they could live.

In an attempt to win the Mega-Chess Championship, Sino-Cit claimed it had genetically hot-housed a four-year-old grandmaster called Cheng Mao Ying - actually a spirit medium psi was 'reading' Cho Yen Lhow's corpse and broadcasting chess moves to Cheng. Dredd and Karyn stopped the scam, then let Cheng's final match go ahead & be humiliating to send a message to Sino-Cit. (During all this, Hong Tong hitman Sammy Chow was bumping off people to ensure that very match)

In 2127, Sino psis learned a black magician named Grand Master Tsung planned to lead a group (including the Catechist and a qlippothic parasite) into Hell. Devlin Waugh and his allies entered Sino-Cit territory in a mission to stop this happening.

Sino carrier fleet in the Atlantic

Rer of a Sino Judge, their first time in red-and-gold due to Eva de la Cruz's colouring

Supreme Justice Sangrenegra launched a coup in Ciudad Barranquilla in 2127 and the Sinos, hoping to gain a satellite in South-Am, began backing his regime. Despite their efforts, Barranquilla suffered a growing civil war and in the summer of 2128, the Sinos were preparing to send a military task force to bolster him against the Contranista rebels. Mega-City One got there first, launching a multinational humanitarian mission (cover for a regime change); the Sino task force attempted to reach the city anyway, almost coming to blows with MC-1's military, before Judge Dredd personally contacted the carrier group and scared them off. The Sov agent in Barranquilla considered this only so impressive, believing the Sinos had no stomach for a fight.

In the early 2130s, the Sinos finally gave up on the seperatist war in the borderlands and the Sovs won.

In 2132, Woo and Madam-Inspector Yishan Li of Paranormal Affairs investigated a series of gangland murders commited during the Hungry Ghost festival - any murder committed during this period needed to be checked that it wasn't a supernatural creature on the loose. All evidence pointed towards a nu gui, the ghost of a murdered innocent girl seeking vengence on the Five Brothers tong society, but this was discovered to be a weapon: a cloned brain that thought it was the dead girl, hooked up in a psi-amplifier to make a fake nu gui. Li (rightly) suspected this was a Mega-City One weapon, testing Sino-Cit's defences against a potential psi-war.

Lunar Judge Troopers

In the same year, the garrisons at Zhang Heng became aware of Global Psycho's operations in a lunar base rented from them. When their Judge Troopers were repelled, they launched a nuclear strike but not before teleporting in (to the surprise of Global Psycho and Dredd both) to retrieve Dredd. Mega-City One negotiated his return but the Sinos likely kept the money he'd won from surviving Global Psycho's killfest. Dredd grimly noted the Sinos were "way ahead of us" with teleportation.

Motorway in 2140 Sino-Cit

In 2138, a treaty between the Kleggs and Mega-City One was signed in Sino-Cit. Sensitive Klegg's poetry would mortify the empire so badly that they capitulated to whatever Barbara Hershey asked for but the Sinos loved his work, and he'd be elected mayor.

Warlord Chang and his mutant hordes stormed out of Mongolia and reached the China Sea, tearing through the Great Wall and its lightly-armed garrison in the process.

Smiley's Black Ops Division assassinated a potential next Chief Judge in Sino Cit in 2140. Dirty Frank captured the assassin but was himself arrested; luckily, Mayor Sensitive Klegg was able to get him released and returned home.

Sino Judges with standard firearms arrest Dirty Frank, in current red and gold

In 2143, Sino-Cit was developing next-gen nano-weavers and the clytonium fusion tank: something Mega-City One's Judge Grant argued justified the time-travelling Project Providence, as it meant the post-Chaos city was behind Pan-Africa. Project Providence placed spies in future Sino-Cit and other states to pass their developments back to present-day MC-1. A Sino spy spotted a Mega-City fusion tank, causing the Sino Block government to wonder how their rivals had already built a replica of their blueprints. Their spies dug up the existence of Providence and an abduction was arranged of Judge Dan Francisco to distract the Judges while an operative attacked Tek-Div. The Sino operative destroyed the equipment and died sending the names of every Providence operative back home.

With Providence exposed, Sino-Cit could discuss sanctions and expelling MC-1 from the Conference of Ten with foreign powers and at an Assembly of Nations summit at the year's end, the Sino delegate openly disputed Mega-City's cover story for the scandal and announced that, for this and other breaches of international law, Sino-Cit would ignore the Assembly inquiry and introduce a sanctions measure. The Scandinavians and Pan-Andes Conurb both backed it, and the Sinos tried to bribe Simba City into their corner.

Judges

Street Judge and Undercover

Madam-Inspector Yishan Li, head of Paranormal Affairs (plainclothes)

The Judges are nominally communist and operated by the People's Justice Ministry, under a Chief Judge; a six-man equivalent to the Council of Five exists. Training is carried out by the Academy of People's Justice and Judges are expected to learn the first seven of the thirty-five styles of shaolin temple kung fu. There is an equivalent of Wally Squad, Organised Crime Division, with Judges going undercover as tong agents ('blending in' by dressing like stereotyped mobsters from Hong Kong films); Tech-Ops, the Tek Div equivalent; and a psi branch called Section Radical 194 aka Ministry of Paranormal Activity. "Inspector" is used as a title over "Judge" for certain roles, unlike other Justice Departments, while senior officials carried the rank of Superintendent and Commissar (who oversee the Academy). High-ranking Judges and the inspectors wear plainclothes rather than uniform.

Similar to cities like Murphyville, Judges are allowed to marry and have children.

Sino Judges had a reputation for being hard on crime, which makes the state of Hong Tong confusing for foreign Judges. Within the Sino Block itself, it's an open secret that Hong Tong Superintendents can answer to both the People's Justice Ministry and the triads, and Woo operated almost openly as both lawman and hitman with seperate names without this seeming to cause an issue.

Undercover Judges wield Lam Industries Mark III Autopistols, four-hundred hi-ex micro-fletchette rounds and with only one setting (rapid fire).

Criminals are sentenced to re-education camps instead of iso-cubes - unless deemed unlikely to reform, then they're implied to be executed.

The military operation at Ciudad Barranquilla was carried out by Judge Troopers and their outer space "peace forts" appear to be run by Judges as well. In this they're in line with Mega-City One and East-Meg (except when Mega-City One has non-Judge soldiers!)

Mongoose RPG

In the early 2000s Dredd RPG from Moongoose, extra details were invented for the Sinos:

• Sino-City Two financially bailed out many of the second-tier nations and city states, including giving India a ruinous loan to recover from its Great Droughts of 2072 and 2086. It uses its debts to control them and requests the debtors sometimes carry out espionage on its behalf.

• It is a global financial centre, centred in Hong Jong, and hosts the Global Stock Exchange in Kowloon District after it took advantage of the disrupted markets. (This was written before Gordon Rennie introduced Hong Tong)

Trivia

• The existence of Sino-City One and Two were introduced in prog 701, for the "Shamballa" world map. A Chinese military group was shown in the same story but it wouldn't be until 1993 that the first Chinese Judges were shown.

The original Sino Judge designs by Paul Marshall, in Hondo colours - the central figure was dropped and the colours changed

Recoloured and modified Sino Judges by Patrick Goddard, colours by Chris Blythe, in the first Hong Tong story

• Sino Judge uniforms have a contorted history. They originally were a modified version of the Hondo Judge uniforms, with two distinct looks shown; then were shown in a modified version of one of Marshall's designs but in the blue-and-yellow of MC-1; and finally from "Regime Change" onwards have been in red-and-gold, the colours of China's flag. Then in "Project Providence", a shot of the government had everyone in white again!

• There was an aborted plan in the 1990s to have Sino-Cit get involved in a war for dominance with Mega-City One. This was dropped after Alan McKenzie departed as Tharg, in large part because (quoth John Tomlinson) "readers didn't take as well to the Millar and Morrison version of Dredd".

• Hong Tong being jointly run with Brit-Cit was established six years after the handover of Hong Kong. It's unclear why that was put in (and this seems to have been dropped later).