In the first scenes of the series, which is partly set in 1960s Beijing, a scientist is brutally beaten by Red Guards because of his belief in the theory of relativity.
Although the description of the ten-year Cultural Revolution is largely in line with Liu Qixin’s novel and many historical records, Chinese authorities often avoid discussing this period, writes The Financial Times, So some scenes, as well as the main antagonist, the Chinese, angered the country a bit.
«If certain television series have to persistently present stories in a «Western-centered» way, this cannot be hidden from the eyes of our audience», — the Chinese Communist Party’s tabloid Global Times said this week.
A series that created by showrunners «Game of Thrones» D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, as well as «True Blood» screenwriter Alexander Wu, received 11 million views on Netflix in just 4 days, making it the second most watched English-language show on the platform.
Liu Qixin’s book from the trilogy «Memory of Earth’s Past», on which the series is based, has sold millions of copies worldwide, been translated into several languages, and won the 2015 Hugo Award. It tells the story of humanity’s first contact with a highly advanced alien civilization.
Although Netflix and other US streaming services are not available in China, many in the country have used VPNs to watch the show, judging by the large attention to the show on the microblogging platform Weibo — posts with the hashtag «Netflix 3 Body Problem» have garnered over 170 million views so far.
«Netflix seems to deliberately want to convey a frightening message to its global audience: it was the Chinese who brought aliens to Earth», — wrote one Chinese social media user, referring to the main character’s role in inviting aliens to visit the planet after her family’s horrific experience during the Cultural Revolution.
Ying Zhu, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, says that nationalism is the primary reason for Chinese viewers’ criticism of the series.
«Netflix’s adaptation cut the story out of the Chinese cultural context and moved it to London,» said Haochen, a public relations manager in Shenzhen who previewed the show on a pirate site last weekend.
Many Chinese viewers preferred the 2023 Chinese TV adaptation from tech giant Tencent, which was set mostly in China and featured mostly Chinese actors. Kenny Ng, a film academic at Baptist University, said the original «novel tends to move away from binary narratives, but the Netflix adaptation leans toward a more simplistic and engaging approach, dividing the characters into clear categories of good and evil».
Politically, China’s ruling party «has never been happy with unrestricted access to Western cultural products», said Josh Stenberg, an associate professor of Chinese studies at the University of Sydney.
While many Chinese have seen the novel’s success as a symbol of China’s cultural strength, Will Payton, a fellow at the Australian National University, said Liu’s story is a larger one, one that explores the collective destiny of humanity rather than focusing solely on China’s social, political or cultural conditions».
«That’s where Liu’s originality lies: he looks beyond China’s own borders to universal themes», — Peyton added.