The force behind an ascending star

Han Song, who in addition to writing science fiction is a senior executive at Xinhua News Agency, says that when the genre first came to the country it served as a mirror of Chinese society and the process of modernization.

"China has a very long civilization, and science fiction first played a role in the rejuvenation of that civilization in the first part of the 20th century. For example, a lot of science fiction at the very beginning just imagined how China would become a very, very strong country."

Nathaniel Isaacson, associate professor of modern Chinese literature at North Carolina State University, says that when Chinese science fiction first appeared early last century the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was collapsing, European countries had again invaded Beijing to put down the Boxer Rebellion, and many coastal areas were under European control. These early Chinese science fiction often explored the place of China in the world and looked at ways it could overcome European colonialism, Isaacson says.

"Fairly often what they imagined was a future where China (was) politically, economically and culturally dominant. For example, the short story New Story of the Stone (which Wu Jianren wrote in the early 1900s) imagined a world where Shanghai had become a world center of trade and commerce, hosted a world expo and global political summits. But the narrative falls apart. At that time people could not imagine such things coming to pass. But they did happen in the early 21st century."