It's been a while since I read it, but I think the cultural revolution served as character development and how the trauma effected some of the characters in the

It's been a while since I read it, but I think the cultural revolution served as character development and how the trauma effected some of the characters in the story. It also served as an analogy for suppressing scientific research. It's something that has been overcome and is (somewhat) overcome in the rest of the book and the subsequent novels from the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. It's not that people are all good, but they are serious, as are the governments involved. It might be more obvious from books 2 and 3. Compare that to something like "Don't look up" (humans stupid) or "Avatar" (human bad)