Late last month, the world’s top science-fiction authors and thousands of adoring fans convened in Chengdu for the World Science Fiction Convention, or WorldCon. Although the event, which gives out the prestigious Hugo Awards, has been held each year since 1939,¹Except for 1942–1945, during World War II. this year was the very first time that China hosted it, a coup that can be largely attributed to one man: Liu Cixin.

Liu Cixin is the author of the trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past, a series that is better known by the title of its first novel, The Three-Body Problem. Originally published as a novel in China in 2008, The Three-Body Problem was translated into English in 2012 and quickly became a global phenomenon. It has sold more than 30 million copies and been translated into over 30 languages. At 2015’s WorldCon, Liu became the first Asian writer to win a Hugo Award, and the book even got former President Barack Obama’s stamp of approval, as he put it on his annual reading list in 2017. 

The trilogy is about to receive even more global attention as Netflix just announced it will release its Three-Body Problem TV show on March 21, 2024, with Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss at the helm and Brad Pitt and director Rian Johnson among the executive producers.

Indeed, the Netflix show solidifies the fact that The Three-Body Problem is among China’s most successful cultural exports, a victory that the country has leaned into. This year’s WorldCon was held in a brand new, state-of-the-art Science Fiction Museum, designed by the late Zaha Hadid — a considerable upgrade from last year’s venue of the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. And Liu’s presence was felt throughout the expansive halls and futuristic programming.

“Ten years ago, science fiction in China did not get the same attention as it does today,” Liu told audience members during the opening ceremony in “Hugo Hall.” 

Ten years ago, Liu was a burgeoning science fiction writer on the verge of breakout success. Ten years before that, he worked at a power plant in Shanxi Province, writing stories in his free time and hoping to get published in local sci-fi magazines. Now, looking relaxed in a dark blue blazer and blue jeans, the 60-year old is China’s own George Lucas or Stan Lee. 

“He’s become an ‘intellectual property’ in and of himself,” says Michael Berry, director of Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. “There’s this incredible amalgamation of products that’s been coming out from his work over the last couple of years. His success has almost single-handedly spawned this global fever towards Chinese sci-fi.”

A lot of writers at the time knew nothing about the industry, but [Liu] is the best showcase of a writer getting taken advantage of in China’s science fiction scene.

Chen Qiufan, a science fiction author who knows Liu personally

An entire Marvel-like universe in China is dedicated to Liu’s work, with a flood of movies, TV shows, graphic novels, video games and other paraphernalia hitting the market in recent years. Visitors to this year’s WorldCon were even greeted by a giant replica of a robot vehicle from The Wandering Earth, one of Liu’s short stories that was turned into a movie in 2019 and has since become the second-highest grossing film in China of all time. And with the Netflix show, Liu’s Three-Body Problem will likely become the most valuable piece of intellectual property (IP) that has ever emerged from China. 

“It’s got the foundation of a franchise that can run forever, really,” says Chris Fenton, a former Hollywood producer and author of the book Feeding the Dragon: Inside the Trillion-Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American Business. 

But since Liu Cixin sold the adaptation rights for the trilogy for pennies on the dollar in 2010, Liu himself has been largely locked out of the IP universe he created. For over a decade, Liu’s IP rights have been passed around and fought over in China’s film industry for ever-increasing sums of money — a saga that is nearly as complex and drama-filled as one of Liu’s novels. After multiple failed attempts and even a murder scandal, the fate of the adaptation rights now lies with a newly established shell company.

“Liu has kind of lost control of his IP. A lot of writers at the time knew nothing about the industry, but he is the best showcase of a writer getting taken advantage of in China’s science fiction scene,” says Chen Qiufan, a science fiction author who knows Liu personally. “It’s a messy situation. And it’s big business. This is how capitalism operates. But in China it’s even more extreme.”

THE MADNESS YEARS

Set in China, Liu’s trilogy is, in short, a sweeping tale about an impending alien invasion and whether a fractured society can band together to defeat a more technologically advanced civilization.

But the first chapter of the English translation of The Three-Body Problem is set in 1967, against the backdrop of a violent Cultural Revolution struggle session. Called the “Madness Years,” the chapter (which appears later in the Chinese version) details how a physics professor is fatally punished for teaching supposedly counter-revolutionary ideas. The story is not autobiographical, but Liu, who was born in Beijing in 1963, was a product himself of China’s madness years. 

In 1966, Liu’s father, a manager at a coal mining company, was sent to work in mines in rural Shanxi Province. Liu then spent a turbulent childhood between Shanxi and Henan, where he lived with his grandparents for a few years to escape the dangers of the Cultural Revolution.

He graduated from North China University of Water and Electric Power in 1988, before being assigned to work as a computer engineer at a Shanxi power plant. The job provided a stable income for Liu and afforded him time to pursue his real passion: writing science fiction.

He completed his first novel a few months before the Tiananmen Square protests broke out in Beijing in 1989. Called 2185, it imagined the digital resurrection of Mao and an experiment with democracy in China 200 years into the future.

Post Tiananmen, Liu’s work grew less explicitly political. Science fiction at the time was a marginal genre with writers mostly serving small pockets of hardcore fans in university book clubs and reading groups. The largest and most influential journal in China devoted to the genre was (and still is) Science Fiction World, a Chengdu-based magazine, and it wasn’t until 1999 that Liu landed a short story, The Whale’s Song, there. 

That year, Liu went on to win a Galaxy Award, China’s most prestigious science fiction prize, for a story called With Her Eyes and never looked back. He won a Galaxy Award each year from 1999 through 2006 for various stories. The 2006 award was for The Three-Body Problem, which Science Fiction World had begun publishing as a series of stories beginning in 2005. Liu then released The Three-Body Problem as a novel in January 2008 with the Chinese publisher Chongqing Press. The book was immediately a best-seller in China, and the second book in the trilogy, The Dark Forest, was released in May of that year. The final book, Death’s End, came out in 2010.

Despite the success of Liu’s books, it was still quite a leap to think that the trilogy could one day turn into a blockbuster movie or hit TV show. China’s film industry did not have an especially long track record nor did it have the budgets and special effect capabilities that would be required to produce a futuristic, outer-space epic.

But at least one person thought it should be adapted for the big screen.

TROUBLESHOOTING

In the late 2000s, a screenwriter named Song Chunyu read The Three-Body Problem and thought that she, along with her husband Zhang Fanfan, a film director, could turn the novel into a movie.

Song and Zhang arranged to have dinner with Liu to ask him about acquiring adaptation rights for the trilogy. Liu agreed to sell them exclusive adaptation rights for somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 RMB ($14,000–$28,000). This is, at least, is the story that has been reported in Chinese media, and The Wire China could not independently confirm details of the meeting or contract.

Although the exact details of the transaction may remain murky, it is clear that Zhang and Song owned the adaptation rights by 2010 — and that they had acquired them for a fraction of their eventual worth.

“Liu sold his rights for an incredibly low price,” says Chen, adding that it was not uncommon for Chinese writers at the time. “Not a lot of the writers recognized there could be troublesome contracts. His generation did not understand the value of their work at all like we do today.”

China has had a copyright law on the books since 1990, and it has been updated several times, including in 2001, 2011 and 2021. But at the time of Liu’s sale, China largely lacked the infrastructure of talent agencies, lawyers and licensing deals that are commonplace in more sophisticated markets and serve to protect the interests of creatives. Moreover, because the film industry was so young — China’s top performing, domestically-produced movie in 2009 grossed just $38 million — a bird in the hand was justifiably attractive. 

“The feeling [among creatives] was ‘if you want to pay me for exclusive rights to use this, great! It’s not going to get you much, and I’ll take whatever you’re willing to pay,’” says Eric Priest, an intellectual property law professor at the University of Oregon. “The 2000s and 2010s were the Wild West for creative IP in China. People were selling exclusive rights for TV series for virtually nothing.”

Once Liu relinquished control, Zhang and Song finalized a script and reportedly shopped it around to Chinese studios. But they struggled to find financing, at least in part because they insisted on retaining full creative control over writing and directing — even though neither of them had enjoyed much box office success in the past.

While the film project stalled, the novel was fast becoming a global sensation. After selling 400,000 copies in China, the English version of the book was released in November 2014 by top science fiction publisher Tor Books. Within months, it attracted the attention of Obama as well as the New Yorker, The New York Times and Mark Zuckerberg. 

The Chinese state quickly glommed on to Liu’s success. “Liu sustains suspense… inviting readers to reflect upon human nature and science by portraying different people’s responses to [alien] creatures,” the state-owned China Daily wrote in 2014. “Liu may provide Western readers a vessel to explore the seemingly alien ‘Great Wall Planet.’”

The rising prominence of the books caught the attention of Lin Qi, chief executive of online gaming company Yoozoo Interactive (also known as Youzu Interactive). Lin was reportedly a die-hard fan of the trilogy and believed that he could leverage his experience in licensing gaming IP to maximize the potential of the source material.

In 2014, Lin became a minority stakeholder in Zhang and Song’s film while allowing them to retain full creative control. The next year, Yoozoo Pictures, a Yoozoo subsidiary, announced that it would invest $200 million into a Three-Body Problem film franchise alongside plans to produce six additional sequels.

With Lin’s money, Zhang and Song secured major Chinese actors and shot their movie over the course of seven months in 2015. The movie was slated for a 2017 release, but never materialized because, according to Chinese media reports, it was unwatchable and production companies said it would have been too difficult to salvage in post-production.

It is unclear who might have spiked the project, but in 2019, Kong Xiangzhao, a former Yoozoo Pictures executive that worked on the film, appeared to admit that the project was a failure. “I feel deeply guilty and ashamed for the recklessness and ignorance of hastily starting the ‘Three-Body’ project 5 years ago,” Kong wrote on social media.

Lin, however, still saw potential and softened the blow of the movie’s failure: In 2018, he bought out Zhang’s stake in the IP for $17 million — roughly 1,200 times what Zhang reportedly paid Liu in 2010.

By this point, fans were growing antsy, and Lin made quick work of capitalizing on the source material. In 2018, he founded a company called the Three-Body Universe and later sold rights to Chinese tech giant Tencent to produce a TV show as well as to video streamer Bilibli to produce an animated series for Chinese audiences. 

Youzu has not disclosed the terms of those deals, but the shows debuted for Chinese audiences this year to mixed reviews: The Tencent version scored a high 8.7 score among users on Douban, China’s version of IMDB, while the Bilibili show scored a 3.8. (The Tencent show is also available to view on YouTube for free.)

Also in 2018, according to the Financial Times, e-commerce giant Amazon was in talks with Yoozoo to purchase rights to produce a three-season show for global audiences for roughly $1 billion. 

Tencent, Bilibili and Amazon did not respond to The Wire’s comment requests on their respective negotiations with Yoozoo.

While the Amazon deal fell through, Lin finally realized his dream of making The Three-Body Problem a global sensation in September 2020, when Netflix and Yoozoo jointly announced that they were producing a TV show with some of Hollywood’s biggest names attached to the project. 

But Lin would never be able to see the project come to fruition.

BAD BREAKS

On December 17, 2020, Shanghai police announced that Lin had been hospitalized due to a “suspected poisoning.” The police said that they had detained Lin’s colleague, Xu Yao, chief executive of the Three-Body Universe, and then later charged him with murder. The announcement set China’s internet ablaze, and Yoozoo‘s stock price dropped 6 percent after the news broke. Lin died on Christmas Day.

Lin had recruited Xu, a western-educated lawyer, in 2017 to lead his company’s efforts in developing and marketing for the trilogy’s IP. Xu’s motive for the alleged murder has not yet been established (his trial began Oct. 31 in Shanghai), but Caixin reported that the relationship between Lin and Xu had frayed as the value of the IP grew. 

Caixin also reported that Xu had a bit of an obsession with poison. He had set up a poison lab in Shanghai to test deadly concoctions that he purchased on the dark web on animals, drawing inspiration from the TV show Breaking Bad about a high-school teacher turned drug kingpin.

Xu allegedly killed Lin with Tetrodotoxin, a neurotoxin found in pufferfish, after slipping a poisonous pill into Lin’s bottle of probiotics. But investigators found four other types of poisons in Lin’s body, and Xu was also allegedly engaged in other experiments at the office with toxins like mercury. Caixin reported that Zhao Jilong, who was Yoozoo Pictures’ chief financial officer and heading up international development of Three-Body Problem IP, along with one other Yoozoo Pictures employee, were reportedly hospitalized for exposure to the toxins.

With Lin’s passing, and Xu behind bars, the fate of the IP was once again up in the air.

Lin had been a controlling shareholder of Yoozoo, the parent company, owning 23.4 percent of the company’s shares. After his death, media reports say his shares were transferred to Lin’s three young children under the guardianship of his wife Xu Fenfen, who replaced Lin as the legal representative of Yoozoo Interactive and chairwoman of the company. 

It doesn’t matter whether a single project succeeds or fails because of the strength of the influence and foundation of the Three-Body Problem [IP]. There will always be opportunities.

Zhao Jilong, CEO of The Three-Body Universe

Yoozoo’s revenues dropped 57 percent between 2020 and 2022, although the turbulence may have been more a product of China’s 2021 crackdown on the gaming sector than Xu Fenfen’s stewardship of the firm. 

Still, Xu Fenfen stepped down as chairman in March of this year and was replaced by a man named Wan Zheng. Wan is not a well-known figure even among Yoozoo investors, but he became the largest shareholder in the company in December 2022, after he bought out some of Xu Fenfen’s holdings via a company called Shanghai Jiayou Enterprise Management. 

Wan appears to have five other companies, including some in the online gaming sector, according to WireScreen data. Shanghai Jiayou was established in 2021 with hundreds of millions of dollars in capital, according to Chinese reports. When Wan was named chairman of Yoozoo, the company announcement simply stated that Wan Zheng had extensive experience in the gaming industry, was born in 1984, and went to Donghua University in Shanghai.

But Wan Zheng and Xu Fenfen quickly got to work, appearing to sell off the IP rights to yet another newly established company.

In February of this year, the Chinese financial news site The Paper reported that a Chengdu-based company called Siyuan Enterprise Management, established in 2022, was buying a 70 percent stake in the Three-Body Universe, the Yoozoo subsidiary that owns the rights. The site reported that Siyuan valued the rights at 2 billion RMB ($275 million) in the deal. (The Wire was unable to confirm the Siyuan deal for Three-Body.)

Siyuan is 96 percent-owned by a company called Anji Shundian Equity Investment Partnership, according to Yicai Global. The second largest shareholder of Three-Body Universe is now (Cedric) Zhao Jilong, according to The Paper.

Zhao is the CEO of Three-Body Universe and the same person that was reportedly hospitalized amid the 2020 murder scandal. Chinese media reports that Zhao is a plaintiff against his former colleague Xu Yao for the alleged murder of Lin Qi. 

But in between court dates, Zhao has appeared focused on developing the Three-Body IP, recently telling a Chinese reporter that he has no plans to slow down development plans.

“It doesn’t matter whether a single project succeeds or fails because of the strength of the influence and foundation of the Three-Body Problem [IP],” he said. “There will always be opportunities.”

CERTAIN AGENDAS

The release of the Netflix show in March is likely to launch The Three-Body Problem into its next phase. The Netflix deal has already raised the books’ profile, likely propelling sales. Over 30 million copies of the trilogy have been sold worldwide since 2008, and the number of books sold internationally has more than doubled from 1.5 million in 2019 to over 3.3 million this year.

And Liu Cixin has profited. Last year, Tor Books paid him a $1.25 million advance to continue its copyright relationship, making Liu one of the company’s highest-ever paid writers. Liu’s future work will also likely benefit. 

“If [the Netflix show] is a hit, there’s going to be a gold rush for Chinese science fiction,” says Gary Goldman, a Hollywood writer and producer whose credits include science-fiction films Total Recall and Minority Report. 

That is a big “if” however. The fact that the show is in the hands of the Game of Thrones creators has raised hopes about its prospects, but the show will also be released into a geopolitical maelstrom, which could make further deals with Chinese sci-fi IP more challenging. 

In 2020, when Netflix first announced that it was producing the Three-Body Problem series in partnership with ‘Yoozoo Group’, a group of U.S. senators wrote a letter to Netflix asking the firm to “seriously reconsider” its decision to give Liu a platform. The senators’ concerns largely stemmed from a 2019 New Yorker profile of Liu in which he advocated support for the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang province. In response, Netflix said that it did not agree with Liu’s comments but stressed that Liu was simply an author and “citizen living in China” with no creative control over the Netflix series.²The senators did not respond to The Wire’s request for comment on whether they were satisfied with Netflix’s response and if they are still wary of the cultural impact of the show. 

Liu is in a unique situation. From his desk at a Shanxi power plant, he has accomplished something that the Chinese government has spent billions of dollars chasing after: a distinctly Chinese cultural product that has real resonance outside of the country. In addition to this soft power success, Liu’s depiction of China as a technological superpower aligns neatly with China’s interests.

“China finally has a cultural export that can show this dazzling, technologically glitzy China,” says Jessica Imbach, a lecturer at the University of Zurich researching Chinese science fiction. .

But the government’s tacit support of Liu — best illustrated by its decision to back his first blockbuster film The Wandering Earth as well as building the science fiction museum in Chengdu — does not come without complications. Liu’s narratives, such as his brutal depiction of the Cultural Revolution, undermine government propaganda efforts. Netflix has had a licensing agreement with Chinese streamer iQIYI since 2017, but it remains unclear if the Netflix version of the show will pass government censors and would be available to Chinese audiences.

“I don’t think it will be shown in China,” says Stanley Rosen, a Chinese politics professor at the University of Southern California, adding that the Chinese government won’t view Netflix’s version as suitable for Chinese audiences. “But you can be sure that it will be heavily watched in China via VPNs because everybody is very curious to see it.”

Still, he says, much like the Chinese backlash against Disney’s 2020 remake of Mulan, “Chinese audiences will be ready to get their knives out, because they assume it will be Hollywood-ized.”

As Liu’s copyrighted universe expands, the one constant seems to be that he himself has little power to influence where it goes. Much like the physics problem he named his first novel for, the gravitational forces of the IP rights, the Chinese government and Western audiences will likely be chaotic. 

Liu Cixin has been appropriated to serve certain agendas of many people. But he just wants to do a solid job on his work. 

Mingwei Song, a Chinese literature professor at Wellesley College who knows Liu

“Liu Cixin has been appropriated to serve certain agendas of many people,” says Mingwei Song, a Chinese literature professor at Wellesley College who knows Liu. “But he just wants to do a solid job on his work. He keeps writing almost every day.”

The next generation of Chinese sci-fi writers, meanwhile, have taken notes on the chaos surrounding Liu’s IP rights and want to ensure that they don’t lose out if they happen to write the next Three-Body Problem.

“We may never have Liu’s success, but we have learned from him,” says Chen. “You have to be careful, to look closely into the contracts, line by line, sentence by sentence to understand what is going on. It can be tricky. And still, as a writer, you don’t have much bargaining power in this game.”

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