This is on the media's midweek podcast. I'm Michael Lohanger.

In March, an adaptation of one of China's biggest cultural exports premiered on Netflix.

Every civilization ends in chaos.

There will eventually be a cataclysm from which we cannot recover.

And when you know your planet is doomed, what is the solution?

Flee. Find the new home. The three body problem based on a book by Leo Sashine follows a group of modern

day scientists battling an alien invasion triggered by a

cataclysmic decision made by an aggrieved physicist during the Cultural

Revolution in China. The show garnered around 15.6 million views in its first week.

And this past Saturday, Beijing kicked off the eighth China science fiction conference.

The theme is scientific Dreams Create the Future.

The event focuses on science fiction technology,

science fiction creation and industry cultivation.

At the opening ceremony ceremony an animated presenter greeted attendees on stage

and she showed off graphs detailing the meteoric rise of science fiction in China

claiming that the industry had raked in nearly

16 billion dollars of revenue in 2023, a 29% increase from last year.

The seeds of this sci-fi

craze were first planted in 2008 with the publication of the three-body problem. The

book became an unexpected global phenomenon. The trilogy has now

exceeded the total sales of all literary works exported by China to date.

Jing Su is a professor of East Asian languages and literatures

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