In the opening scenes of Netflix’s 3 Body Problem , an adaptation of a Chinese sci-fi bestseller partly s et in 1960s Beijing, an academic endures violent beatings from Red Guards because of his belief in the theory of relativity.
While the depiction of the decade-long Cultural Revolution is largely faithful both to Beijing-born Liu Cixin’s acclaimed 2006 novel The Three-Body Problem and to many historical records, it is a period that Chinese authorities often avoid discussing. That and the fact that the main villain is Chinese while most other characters are portrayed by westerners has stirred disquiet in China.
“If certain TV series have to persist in presenting stories in a ‘western-centric’ way, that won’t escape the eyes of [our] audiences,” the Chinese Communist party tabloid Global Times said this week.
With Game of Thrones creators DB Weiss and David Benioff and True Blood writer Alexander Woo as showrunners, Netflix’s 3 Body Problem — on which Liu is listed as a consulting producer — registered 11mn views in its first four days, making it the platform’s second most-viewed English TV show globally.
The book, which has sold millions of copies around the world, been translated into multiple languages and won the 2015 Hugo Award, tells the story of humanity’s first contact with a highly advanced alien civilisation.
While Netflix and other US streaming services are not accessible in China, many in the country have watched the show using virtual private networks, software that masks the location of the user and gains access to a service or bypasses censors. Posts featuring the “Netflix 3 Body Problem” hashtag had been read 170mn times on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo by Friday.
“Netflix seems to deliberately want to convey a frightening message to its global audience: it is the Chinese who brought aliens to [Earth],” wrote one Chinese social media user, referring to the protagonist’s role in inviting aliens to visit after her family’s horrific experience during the Cultural Revolution.
“Nationalism is absolutely the root cause of Chinese viewers’ criticism of the show,” said Ying Zhu, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s academy of film.
“Netflix’s adaptation cut the story out of Chinese cultural context and moved it to London,” said Haochen, a public relations manager in Shenzhen, who did not want his full name published. He had watched a pirated version of the show over the past weekend. “It became a product of a western perspective.”
Many Chinese viewers preferred a 2023 Chinese TV adaptation by tech giant Tencent that was set largely in China with predominantly Chinese actors.
Kenny Ng, also a film academic at Baptist University, said the original novel “strives to break away from binary narratives, but the Netflix adaptation leans towards a more simplified and entertaining approach, dividing characters into clear categories of good and evil”.
“On the other hand, the Tencent version of the adaptation maintains a high level of respect for the original details of the novel, although it does omit certain sensitive scenes,” Ng added. The Chinese government has strict censorship rules on the portrayal of history on screen.
“It’s something that domestic television companies are unable to touch but only foreign networks can,” said Cheng, an office worker in Chengdu who did not want his full name published.
The production team tried to be faithful to the original novel, said Derek Tsang, a Hong Kong filmmaker who directed the first two episodes of the Netflix show. “There are no elements in the [series] intending to smear or slander China.”
It is difficult to determine exact differences in taste between western and eastern audiences, he said. “I would say [the Tencent and Netflix versions] are two very different approaches of adaptation.” Netflix’s version needed “to be more international facing”, Tsang added.
This difference in approach helps explain Beijing’s reluctance to ease censorship rules. Politically, the Chinese party-state has “never been comfortable with unfettered access to western cultural products”, said Josh Stenberg, associate professor of Chinese studies at the University of Sydney.
While many Chinese people had seen the success of the novel as a symbol of China’s cultural soft power, Will Peyton, a visiting fellow at Australian National University, said Liu’s story is bigger than that and “one that examines humanity’s collective destiny, rather than focusing solely on China’s social, political or cultural conditions”.
Peyton added: “That’s where Liu’s originality lies, in its looking beyond China’s own borders to universal themes.”