Commentary, interpretation and opinion by
PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀fujirama9@gmail.com
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
SCIENCE FICTION WRITER LIU CIXIN, NETFLIX AND SENATOR MARSHA BLACKBURN'S THREE-BODY PROBLEM
(AS PUBLISHED IN SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST 30.09.20)
"Why a US senator’s attack on Chinese writer Liu Cixin and Netflix smacks of nationalistic double standards"
US
senators, including Marsha Blackburn, have called Netflix out on Liu
Cixin’s comments on the Chinese government’s policies in Xinjiang. Yet
Blackburn, a supporter of Donald Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’, is no friend of
Muslims in Xinjiang or anywhere else
In
one orbit, you have a politician from Tennessee, in another orbit you
have a science fiction writer from Shanxi. Though their lives have
followed very different trajectories thus far, each has begun to perturb
the movement of the other due to the dark tug of nationalism.
Marsha
Blackburn, a US Senator from Tennessee, nominated US President Donald
Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, denies climate change and rejects the
science of evolution.
Liu Cixin is China’s first winner of the Hugo Award for science fiction. He
worked as a computer engineer in rural Shanxi, but his creative flights
of fancy have taken him clear across the universe.
Their point of contention?
Netflix is adapting Liu’s The Three-Body Problem,an epic novel that is grounded in China, but imbued with a breathtaking cosmological perspective.
A China-produced version of The Three-Body Problem
had been slated for a big-screen release but was postponed indefinitely
due to an unsatisfactory cut. Then Netflix proposed a television
series, bolstering hopes that the award-winning story would make it to
the screen after all. The 2019 record-breaking box office success of The Wandering Earth,also based on a book by Liu, was encouraging.
Enter Blackburn, stage right.
In
this fevered US election season, she is attacking Netflix’s creative
collaboration with Liu, not so much because of his books, but because of
a few comments attributed to him in a June 17, 2019 profile in The New Yorker. Blackburn’s letter to Netflix cites the following comment by Liu about his government’s policy in Xinjiang:
“If anything, the government is helping their economy and trying to
lift them out of poverty … If you were to loosen up the country a bit,
the consequences would be terrifying.”
Clearly,
Liu’s view of his country doesn’t conform to the highly politicised
negative narrative currently wreaking havoc with US-China relations.
The
quote in question is pro-status quo, but it is neither remarkable nor
should it be entirely beyond the comprehension of those criticising Liu.
Indeed, it is not so different from what an avowed supporter of Trump,
like Blackburn, would say about the need for federal intervention
The
context for Liu’s comments, only alluded to in the interview, was a
series of terror attacks, including a bloodbath at Kunming railway
station in 2014 that killed 31 and injured 140 and which the Chinese government said was perpetrated by separatist forces.
Liu’s
revulsion of terrorism, and his willingness to embrace strong measures
to combat it, should not be unfamiliar to Americans in the post-9/11
era. Absent the play of nationalism, his law-and-order stance does not
differ as much from Blackburn’s as it might appear at first glance
The real dispute is not in the realm of ideas but nationality.
For
a Chinese to talk about China much in the way an American might talk
about America is too much for an American supremacist like Blackburn to
digest.
Although the news from Xinjiang
is not reassuring and Uygur advocacy enjoys growing support on both
sides of the aisle in Congress, Blackburn is no friend of Muslims in
Xinjiang or anywhere else. She strongly supported Trump’s “Muslim ban”, as well as his border wall with Mexico.
At a time when the US economy is struggling and the country is facing a divisive election, racial strife and intimations of civil war,
it is puzzling that Blackburn and four fellow US senators should take
the time and effort to single out Liu and excoriate Netflix.
Blackburn’s
jeremiad against China makes a specific mention of “involuntary medical
testing, and forced sterilisation and abortion”, which is not
surprising; one of her political ads falsely accused Planned Parenthood
of being in the business of selling “baby body parts”.
Liu’s
stated support for China’s one-child policy, elsewhere in the
interview, and his implicit support for abortion gives the US senator
all the ammunition she needs.
A
master at manipulating indignation, Blackburn is playing the China card
to rile up a depressed and confused electorate in favour of Trump.
