Netflix’s big-budget adaptation of Chinese sci-fi novel “The Three-Body Problem” has been among the top shows globally on the platform since the first episode aired on March 21.
Content from the show, including still images and videos, has been banned in China by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) because of the portrayal of realistic scenes in which people are beaten to death in public during the Cultural Revolution.
The streaming show, “3 Body Problem,” is adapted from the novel by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. The first season has eight episodes. The story spans decades, across China, Europe, and the United States, focusing primarily on humanity’s preparations for an alien invasion.
In 2015, “The Three-Body Problem” became the first Asian novel to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, which is an annual literary award for science fiction or fantasy works.
The first episode of the Netflix adaptation opens with a shocking five-minute-long scene of a struggle session (also known as a denunciation rally, which is a violent public spectacle) in Tsinghua University at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Ye Wenjie, one of the main characters who was studying at Tsinghua, witnessed her father, the famous physicist Ye Zhetai, being humiliated and beaten to death by a group of Red Guards on stage because he refused to denounce his beliefs, such as Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Some Chinese viewers, who watched the show via a VPN because Netflix is officially unavailable in mainland China, praised the opening scene on social media.
Some compared Netflix’s version with the 2023 mainland Chinese TV adaptation of the novel that deleted the Cultural Revolution scene. One post read, “The Netflix version of The Three-Body Problem finally completes what the Tencent version left out that everyone wanted to see but didn’t get to see.”
Another post read: “After watching the Chinese TV adaptation of Three-Body Problem, I felt that it didn’t make much sense. After watching the first ten seconds of the Netflix version, the answer came out. It all makes sense now.”
Erasing the Cultural Revolution From History
The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was a violent mass political movement launched by then-CCP leader Mao Zedong to consolidate his power and eradicate traditional Chinese culture and Western ideals of democracy and freedom.The CCP mobilized people to destroy temples, historical buildings, books, and artifacts, and to fight each other. Officials, intellectuals, professionals, and other innocent people were subjected to public humiliation parades and beatings. As many as 2 million people died unnatural deaths during the Cultural Revolution.
The English-language translation of “The Three-Body Problem” describes the brutality of the period at the beginning of the novel: “[Over] 40 days, in Beijing alone, more than 1700 victims of struggle sessions were beaten to death. Many others picked an easier path to avoid the madness.”
Some Chinese viewers pointed out on social media that the reality of the Cultural Revolution is much more brutal than what the Netflix version portrayed. During the violent political movement, many Chinese people committed suicide as a means to “end the pain of persecution.”
Pro-CCP Chinese viewers who jumped over China’s firewall to watch the show disapproved of the Cultural Revolution scene and gave low scores on the Chinese film critic website Douban. Some accused the show of deliberately using a tragic moment in the country’s past to belittle the world’s second-largest economy.
The CCP’s current leader, Xi Jinping, said in 2013 that “the next 30 years cannot negate the previous 30 years” in terms of the CCP’s policies. Some observers have said that Xi appears to be launching ”Cultural Revolution 2.0” through his increasingly left-leaning policies and tightened controls.
Yue Shan, current affairs observer and columnist with The Epoch Times, wrote: “[The] Cultural Revolution is a collective painful memory for the Chinese people. The current senior leaders of the CCP who grew up during that period were victims of the movement. However, due to their desire for power, they don’t want people to know the truth about the Cultural Revolution and deny the truth, so there’s the danger that the Cultural Revolution is returning.”
U.S.-based current affairs commentator Tang Hao wrote on social media platform X, “The Three-Body Problem shows extraordinary momentum from the beginning: first, it presented the cruelty, bloodshed, and destruction of human ethics of the CCP’s Cultural Revolution; second, it presented how the CCP creates collective terror to control the people; third, it revealed the stupidity of the CCP’s ‘atheism’ and hatred of gods and Buddhas.”
The creators of “3 Body Problem,” D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, have said that they are already working on storylines for a second season.
