Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’ Spawns Anger in China

Among science fiction authors there are a few awards which are given out annually to recognize the best novels, novellas, short stories, artists, etc. The most prestigious of these is the Hugo Award named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the magazine Amazing Stories. The first Hugo award was given out in the early 1950s and since that time they form a pretty good guide to the very best the genre has to offer.

In 2015, a Chinese author named Cixin Liu won the Hugo Award for his novel The Three-Body Problem, becoming the first Asian author to ever win the award. The novel was very popular, both in Chinese and in English and last year it was adapted for television as a 30-episode series in China. (I watched a few episodes of the Chinese show and in my opinion it wasn’t very good.) But the show was also adapted for Netflix as an 8-episode show called “3 Body Problem” which premiered last night. The new show was produced by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, best known as the producers of HBO’s hit fantasy series Game of Thrones. 

I’ve only seen the first episode of 3 Body Problem but right away it was a big improvement over the Chinese version in terms of production values. But what really struck me was the way it opened. It starts with a communist struggle session happening in the midst of the cultural revolution. One of the main characters watches as her father is marched out on a stage and presented to the mob as an enemy of the people. Why? Because he was a physics teacher who taught the theories of relativity and the Big Bang to his students. He refuses to kowtow to the student activists and is beaten to death on stage.

Opening scene of the new Nexflix original “3 Body Problem” premiering today. This is an adaptation of a Chinese novel and later a TV series.

The scene truthfully portraits a bloody struggle session during the Cultural Revolution. The target of was a professor of physics. His… pic.twitter.com/K90GMN2qU4

— Xi Van Fleet (@XVanFleet) March 21, 2024

Wow! I haven’t read the Cixin Liu’s book yet so I didn’t know if this was true to his novel or something added by American producers. It turns out the answer is a bit of both.

Author Liu said in an interview with the New York Times in 2019 that he had originally wanted to open the book with scenes from Mao’s Cultural Revolution, but his Chinese publisher worried they would never make it past government censors and buried them in the middle of the narrative.

The English version of the book, translated by Ken Liu, put the scenes at the novel’s beginning, with the author’s blessing.

I don’t think this was the author’s intention, given that the book was originally serialized in 2008, but watching the scene above in 2024 in America, this really felt like a commentary on cancel culture.

In any case, having that scene open the show was apparently too much for some Chinese viewers. (Netflix isn’t available in China but many Chinese people use VPN’s to get around China’s Great Firewall.)

Among the country’s more patriotic internet users, discussions on the adaptation turned political, with some accusing the big-budget American production of making China look bad…

…some online commentators accused the show’s producers of “making a whole of tray of dumplings just for a bit of vinegar sauce,” a popular saying used to describe an ulterior motive — in this case, they argued, making a whole TV series just to paint China in a bad light.

“Netflix you don’t understand ‘The Three Body Problem’ or Ye Wenjie at all!” read a comment on social media platform Weibo. “You only understand political correctness!”

I wish the producers were trying to portray China in a bad light but, again, the struggle session is apparently in the Chinese version of the book, just downplayed a bit. As for Netflix being politically correct, that’s sort of ironic given that the cultural revolution as depicted in the show was itself an extreme and very literal case of political correctness. Reuters had this quote from a viewer in China:

“The first scene made my jaw drop. Even though I had anticipated this, the scene still startled me,” said one Weibo user.

Other online critics apparently didn’t like that Netflix’s version had moved some of the action to London to make the book less Chinese.

Personally, I’m going to keep watching it and see where it goes but having seen two versions of the intro now my honest take is that the story seems to have a really high body count/schlock content for serious science fiction. Of course if you’ve seen Game of Thrones then you already know that’s what these producers do. Maybe the story will grow on me, but I know people who’ve read the book and found it disappointing so I’m not very optimistic.

In any case, that opening scene was great. I wish every person in China could have seen it last night but of course that can’t happen because the cultural revolution in China never really ended.