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Sci-Fi Books China

How Chinese Sci-Fi Conquered America (nytimes.com) 90

Posted by msmash from the pushing-the-limits dept.
From a report: When the English translation of "The Three-Body Problem" was published in 2014, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work of speculative fiction. President Barack Obama praised the novel, calling it "just wildly imaginative." Mark Zuckerberg recommended it to his tens of millions of Facebook followers; George R.R. Martin blogged about it. Publishers around the world chased after translation rights, which eventually sold in 26 languages, including Turkish and Estonian. It won the 2015 Hugo Award, one of the genre's most prestigious honors, making Liu Cixin the first Asian author to win the prize for best novel. It was also the first time a novel in translation had won the prize. The book and its two sequels went on to sell nearly nine million copies worldwide. Now, Liu Cixin says, he recommends that Chinese sci-fi fans who speak English read Ken Liu's translation of "The Three-Body Problem" rather than the Chinese version. "Usually when Chinese literature gets translated to a foreign language, it tends to lose something," he says. "I don't think that happened with 'The Three-Body Problem.' I think it gained something."

The success of "The Three-Body Problem" not only turned Liu Cixin into a global literary star; it opened the floodgates for new translations of Chinese science fiction. This, in turn, has made Ken Liu a critical conduit for Chinese writers seeking Western audiences, a literary brand as sought-after as the best-selling authors he translates. (Among Chinese sci-fi authors and fans, he is often referred to affectionately as Xiao Liu, Little Liu, to distinguish him from Liu Cixin, who is known as Da Liu, Big Liu.) Liu's translations have reshaped the global science-fiction landscape, which has long been dominated by American and British authors. Over the past decade, he has translated five novels and more than 50 works of short fiction by dozens of Chinese authors, many of whom he has discovered and championed himself.
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How Chinese Sci-Fi Conquered America More

How Chinese Sci-Fi Conquered America

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  • Obvious astroturfing is obvious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @12:01PM (#59484394)

    One good sci-fi book does not a conquest make.

    I'm sure I will get to this when my current backlog of heinlein, scalzi, stephenson (maybe not scifi sometimes), asimov and bradbury run dry. And those are just Americans, I've been told I should read more philip k. dick too, and there are a number of established Russian sci-fi writers that get good translations these days, I have a book here by Sergey Dyachenko that also came highly recommended. I wouldn't say Russian sci-fi has conquered America either, but they have a few more strong entries than China does.

    I think China sci-fi authors have a long road ahead of them. Let's stop with the China bullshit, it's a horrible country that we really don't want to encourage.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @12:12PM (#59484436)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Obvious astroturfing is obvious (Score:5, Funny)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @12:13PM (#59484440)

      One good sci-fi book does not a conquest make.

      Didn't you hear? Amazon chose to dump the rights to almost every other book it carried. Now, its literary offerings come down to The Three Body Problem and various writings by Oprah Winfrey.

      Additionally, Borders is hiring on thousands of new staff and re-opening hundreds of stores nationwide - all because of the expectation that this book is going to turn its fortunes around.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by ixneme ( 1838374 )

      Your loss, really. I'd rate Remembrance of Earth's Past as one of the top 3 sci-fi creations I've read, and I've read quite a few. Like most good sci-fi it is part political treatise, with genuinely clever insights at the level of the individual, nation, and species. The first book I just found entertaining, by the end of the third book I was floored by the scope of the series; it's like a ride on an interstellar rocket, starting at ground level observing people and by the last page you're staring at the

      • One good sci-fi book does not a conquest make.

        Something to always remember is that the reporter who writes the story does not get to write the headline. Headlines are written by somebody else, and are written to grab eyeballs, not to accurately summarize the story.

        Yes, the headline is hyperbole. Liu, for the first time ever for a Chinese SF writer, was published and sold well in America. But "conquered" is a little over the top.

        Your loss, really. I'd rate Remembrance of Earth's Past as one of the top 3 sci-fi creations I've read, and I've read quite a few.

        The Chinese part is really interesting-- Chinese society really is an alien culture.

        The science in the book makes no sense

    • Add some NK Jemesin in there—she's won basically every award there is to win, and each one of her books in the Broken Earth series won a Hugo.

      I grew up on Heinlein, but I'll be honest, you can just read a few of his books and be done with it. Friday, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and the Cat Who Walked Through Walls sufficiently capture his thoughts. I didn't even *like* Stranger in a Strange Land the three times that I read it, but I did it anyway because it really seemed

    • Thank you for that last sentence --- the amount of pro-propaganda crap on the American PuppetMedia and the BBC/CBC is incredible --- and they always leave off the disclaimer when they are interviewing Chinese citizens that those phony newsies are accompanied by four or five political minders from the CCP, minders with the horrific power to disappear the interviewees and their families with a snap of their fingers!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Just statistically there are 1.3 billion Chinese so there are bound to be quite a lot of good books written in China. Many will probably be too tied to the culture to travel well.

      China is producing anime now too, and at least visually the quality is up there with Japanese stuff, which itself is far ahead of Western animation.

      Eventually big budget Chinese movies will be made with Western audiences in mind, the same way Hollywood has Chinese audiences in mind now.

    • Let's stop with the China bullshit, it's a horrible country that we really don't want to encourage.

      I really don't know how anybody can defend China. Seriously, they execute political dissidents and take their fucking organs, and the evidence in support of that is pretty damning. The UN has sanctioned other countries and even tried their political leaders for crimes against humanity for doing less than that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Vastad ( 1299101 )

      Just wanted to post to recommend adding Iain M. Banks' Culture series to your back log.

      The Player of Games is a good one to dip your toes into. All the Culture novels are a little bit like being thrown into the middle of a movie and not knowing what happened earlier, but that one eases you in the best.

  • Really? One book conquered all of sci-fi in America?

    also, What a stupid comparison.

  • translation lost a lot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by f00zbll ( 526151 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @12:14PM (#59484444)

    I will disgree with Lui Cixin. Although ken's translation to english is good, it looses a lot of context. Half of it is cultural context, which simply can't be translated sufficiently. You'd need several books to explain the cultural context and language to fully explain it.

    Luckily the 3 body problem is really an exploration in philosophy, so even without the cultural context the core of the novel is intact. What you miss out is deeper philosophical exploration of different religions, reincarnation, social structures, knowledge and perception.

  • Enjoying access to cheap technology and little copyprivilege. Plus a state where far-off fiction is less censored. It would be strange if this woudln't produce a spike in creativity.
    Just like Germany before it got Urheberrecht.

    It's not like Chinese people are extraterrestrials from a parallel helliverse, just because their leadership is insane, you know? (Which seems to be the implied reason this is news.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )

      What makes you think their leadership is insane. This leadership has taken China from dirt poor to the largest economy in the world in less than 30 years.

      If thats insane give me insane every time.

      And with far few human rights abuses than the Gilded age of America.

      • The are "insane" in that they operate on the notion that they can continue to oppress their own people without any negative backlash

        Even in Confucian times, the Chinese held reverence for their producers, i.e. farmers as well as their elders, because this enforced social order and kept a balance between different elements of society.

        The modern technocracy that is China seems to have forgotten those elements of traditional Chinese rule and are running their leadership off of a cliff by only focusing on cente

      • Stalin did something similar. How you do things in politics matters more so than actually achieving whatever political goal you have set for yourself.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ghoul ( 157158 )

          More people died during the expansion to the west as well as the gold rushes than during the collectivization famines. Development always comes at a price

    • Re:Yeah, well, there's 1.4 billion people. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @03:38PM (#59485340)

      I don't have any problems with Chinese people, I'm married to one. I have big problems with their government, and their government mouthpieces who appear to have produced this article. I could quote my wife's grandparents and parents regarding the awfulness of their government, and the outrageous things it has done, but I'd rather focus on what they're doing bad today and what the impacts are to anyone who does business with them today.

      Once the government finally collapses, and the great firewall disappears and the state sponsored media evaporates, I'll be less openly hostile to it all. Until then, I don't really want to have anything to do with them, and I don't think anyone outside of China should either.

      I'm wiling to entertain the notion that the book is great. But somehow we went from one great book to domination, and therein lies the greatest problem with the Chinese government and its network of toadies.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hasaf ( 3744357 )
        Relevant to your post, not to the story here in slashdot.

        I had an assistant who was rapidly becoming a friend. One afternoon when we were just sitting around my apartment she asked me a question. She asked, “what really happened at Tiananmen Square?”

        I was concerned about how I should answer that question; so I asked, “what have you been told about what happened.”

        She told me that when she asked her History teacher, she was told that it is a large plaza in Beijing where people

  • Not sure why, but the likes of Banks, Reynolds, Asher... hard to top.

  • And here, I thought that to write for the New York Times, you had to know what the word 'conquered' means.
  • Ok, so the lead in to the piece is just kinda silly (entering a market is not the same as conquering it), but I'm actually kinda stoked about this.

    Granted, I really did not like 3 Body Problem or Liu Cixin's writing, but I do love the idea of companies seeing the value in translating works for a non-english audience. I am pretty into the idea of seeing more authors from outside the US/EU getting their sci-fi on American shelves. So if Cixin's frame means publishers are going to be more willing to underwr

    • Yes. They should start by translating Harlan Ellison's 'Approaching Oblivion' to Chinese. Along with most of his other books. And maybe the Chinese market is ready for China Meiville's work and perhaps Jemisin's trilogy.

      Challanging authority? Not space-western enough? What a pity.

      (Meiville is an open Trotskyite- that should go over well in stalinist China)

  • He worked in China and wrote Norstrilia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • America Still Reads Science Fiction ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @12:34PM (#59484522)

    I guess the times is either pushing an agenda here or just has no idea what science fiction is,.

    For the past 20 years the science fiction section of any book store might as well have been the romance novel in space section, oh and the romance novel with elves section. There just isn't much of a market to conquer anymore.. You still have Stephenson, Vinge, Baxter, Barnes, Egan and a very few others actually bothering to write science fiction but for the most part science fiction is a dead letter.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • You have hard sci-fi like the Expanse. Semi-hard sci-fi series like the honorverse from David Weber. There is a lot of very good sci-fi. I have no idea what is in stores because I don't go to them. I see a lot of good sci-fi on Amazon and I have heard a lot of good sci-fi on my kindle.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Yeah, I am not really sure what people are complaining about. The volume and quality has generally been going up over the years, though it does mean that all the subgenres have been increasing so I get that some people get upset that everyone is benefiting rather than just them.

        I think people also tend to have rather selective memory, taking a handful of works across decades then bemoaning that books of their 'equal' are not produced every single year and to the exclusion of all others. Some are also jus
      • I liked the honorverse (or at least I did) but it's space-opera, not even semi-hard science fiction.
    • I completely agree with Crashmarik except for Stephenson, and some of the others who I feel are lacking as writers. Last two actual SF books, and both outstanding although the first one is the best of all time classics, were Iain Banks' Player of Games [The Culture series] and Sterling's Drakon.
    • You should really read the expanse series of books by Corey.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by eriks ( 31863 )

      While I agree with you that the quality and character of science fiction has changed a lot since the "Golden Age" of sci-fi: Asimov, LeGuin, Heinlein, Simak, etc., there are still (as you point out) some quite good contemporary sci-fi writers, though I'm not sure I'd define the list as a "very few", since I would add to your list (in no particular order):

      Becky Chambers, Nathan Lowell, Lois McMaster Bujold (yeah, they're romantic, but definitely sci-fi), Peter F Hamilton, John Scalzi\, KSR, Scott Meyer (imag

    • I don't agree with you. Science fiction has always been the main engine of progress. These ideas are gradually assimilated in the minds and begin to be realized in reality. That's why I like the genre. Once I ordered a detailed study in an online service and I liked his explanation [writingpeak.co.uk]. I still think whether to make the impact of science fiction on the world the subject of my future dissertation))

  • I like real speculative fiction (not the "science fantasy" so often found today), and if there is anything "groundbreaking" in The Three Body Problem, I never reached that. I have absolutely no idea what the raving reviewers usually read and what they compare against, but it does not seen to come from the same book-universe I frequent. I am also sure that this is not due to translation, the translation seemed pretty good to me and it basically rads as written by a native speaker. But the thing does simply n

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by euxneks ( 516538 )
      I agree with you. I found the book lacking in terms of compelling narrative, and it was a real slog just to finish the book. I learned from that book that there are other more interesting books to me and I shouldn't have to force myself to read a book.

      • You don't know the "cultural context" needed to understand the book.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          While I do not know many Chinese people, the ones I know did not strike me as that boring, and that did include some genuine followers of the official ideology.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      The 3 body problem books were only groundbreaking to audiences not already familiar with the genre. They were marketed to the general population, so they presented a lot of stuff that was new to them, but kinda old to anyone who reads sci-fi generally. Personally, to me they read like old 40s or 50s sci-fi with a new-buzzword paint job. Pretty cringe worthy, but I guess if you mostly read other genres it might have been novel.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Makes sense to me. Kind of like the general audience was awed by the "philosophy" in The Matrix, while a longer time SF reader would know Simulacron-3 or at least some derivative stories. (I just liked the aesthetics of The Matrix.)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jythie ( 914043 )
          Good comparison.

          But yeah, the trilogy was heavily invested in the idea of extreme deterministic futurism and the idea that every civilization will realize that in billions of years the galaxy will be full so they should wipe out any civilization that might compete with them NOW. It was a dumb idea in the 50s when people held it as visionary, and it is kinda sad seeing a modern non-scifi audience rediscover it.

      • Ah, like Harry Potter and fantasy!

        There's nothing wrong with that (everyone has to be introduced somehow), but that doesn't make it a great work of fantasy. So, based on what you've said, I doubt I would find The Three-Body Problem to be a great work of science fiction. Though maybe a way to kill a day when I have nothing else going on.

    • I'm about 3/4 of the way through the last book now, and I definitely see your point: the books are very verbose, filled with details which really don't need to be there (maybe it's partially a cultural issue but I don't feel like I need to know the ancestry of the chef that served the main character dinner just because they exchanged 10 words), and details which actually are important often take most of the book before it becomes obvious why they were relevant. When they do, though, the payoff is usually pr

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Good to know. Maybe I will just let it sit for another 10 or 20 years and give it another try when I am older. At the moment it is definitely too slow going for me.

  • Some reviewers say one bumps into various cultural differences that may baffle Western readers. For example, in one story, a group of scientists all commit suicide because they were embarrassed over an incorrect prediction they made about a big event. It was an honest mistake, not an attempt to deceive.

    The reviewer found this really odd. While an individual scientist with mental health issues may do such, it's unlikely that a group would, at least in Western countries. There seemed to be an unstated assump

    • Considering no group of scientists have done that in the West OR the East it should baffle all readers. That is why the whole "cultural context" malarky is just that. It isn't "cultural context", just bad exposition.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        It's quite possible some "oddities" are cultural differences and some are just bad writing. I should have pointed that out, my apologies.

        It does make it hard to judge a book if one cannot tell which is which.

        • Most of the "cultural context" people drone on about are just idealized visions of what the writer WISHES his culture was like. It is nonsensical to the reader outside of the culture, because it is complete nonsense.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Tablizer ( 95088 )

            Are you saying there are rarely significant cultural differences in the sci-fi written by authors from different countries? I found that hard to believe.

            Or that it's usually clear what's going on when it affects the story? This makes the assumption the writer can predict how multiple different cultures are going to interpret their work. I also find that hard to believe.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Oddly enough, I think the biggest cultural context problem was not western readers missing eastern pieces, but the author trying to work in a western style that he was not familiar with. As I understand it, the trilogy was an attempt by the author to explore western style apocalyptic themes, something he claimed were not present or not as prominent in Chinese literature. So I think one reason for the rather disjoint feeling is that the work was a foggy mirror, a person from one culture trying to write mat

  • But I couldn't finish the three body problem. I got bored with it about 100 pages in. I've read a few of his short stories I rather liked, though.

  • Three body problem was a real slog (Score:5, Insightful)

    by euxneks ( 516538 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @01:35PM (#59484866)
    I had to force myself to finish reading it. How are so many people raving about this book? What am I missing? I'm not going to force myself to read the rest of the series, I have better books to spend my time on.

    • Re:Three body problem was a real slog (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Dixie_Flatline ( 5077 ) <vincent@jan@goh.gmail@com> on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @01:59PM (#59484984) Homepage

      The first book is, unfortunately, a bit of a chore—at least for a lot of the beginning. The second book also starts slowly, but really ramps up in the second half.

      The third book is an amazing finish to the story, and is one of the most satisfying series finales I've ever read. It's actually a rare thing to have a series end so well, in my opinion.

      It's all very well written, but you have to be a bit patient. I don't know if you ever read the Cryptonomicon, but I always thought that the story really didn't start until around 600 pages in. The Remembrance of Earth's Past series is similar. You get a tonne of preamble to give context for the excellent finish.

      • I've only read the first one, but I wouldn't describe it as "slow". I would describe it as outright atrocious writing, cardboard characters, a never-ending stream of deus ex machina to advance the plot. As for the science part, it feels like somebody read a stack of pop-sci magazines, and just threw every "neat" idea into some scene or another without bothering with any details.

        The least boring part of the book is the Cultural Revolution flashbacks, which are actually concentrated in the first half of it. T

    • I felt the same but DID go on to finish the trilogy. The next two books are completely different with more science fiction, less history and lots of fresh ideas for the genre. Heck Dark Forest, giving nothing less than a novel answer to the Fermi Paradox,( pun intended; it could be a science paper in novel form)

  • And I read a lot of sci-fi.

  • Just because most people aren't aware the book exists and, hey, this is Slashdot.

    Donald Kingsbury's Psychohistorical Crisis (from about 20 years ago) is an unauthorized follow-up to Asimov's Foundation books. As such, it has to use thinly-disguised names for characters and places in Asimov's universe (Trantor is "Splendid Wisdom", for example; and Hari Seldon is simply "The Founder"). It's much, much better than any of the authorized follow-ups... but it's a dense book, and the only places I've found it is

  • "one of the genre's most prestigious honors" Well, it used to be, anyway...
    • I wish I had points to mod this up. Sad Puppies showed how seriously flawed the Hugo's have become. A tiny cliche of people vote on them and pretty much vote in lock step based on social issues in the books rather than the quality of the books.

      Now the Dragon Awards are very much applicable and hopefully are one of the final nails in the coffin of the Hugo's.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Megane ( 129182 )

        A tiny cliche of people vote on them

        Specifically, attendees and supporters of the World Science Fiction Convention are eligible. I've been eligible a couple of times but didn't vote because I don't keep up with new SF writing.

  • I made the mistake of reading The Three Body Problem. Don't believe any of the hype about it. It's a total waste of time. It pretends to be hard sci-fi. Then you reach the "big reveal", and it just turns into the worst technobabble you've ever read. The author has no clue how physics works but pretends he does. The result is a stupid, totally unbelievable plot pretending to be based on real science. A lot of the characters are also pretty unbelievable.

    I think a lot of people gave this book way too mu

  • Conquered is a touch overstated (Score:3, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @03:25PM (#59485276) Journal

    What happened here is that some deeply woke progressives grabbed the weirdest, most diverse thing they could find (apparently there was a lack of transgender Sci Fi that year) and voted for it as a giant virtue-signal of diversity.

    It's not that good a book.

    Look everyone has their preferences and I'm not arguing aesthetics with anyone, but I've read Science Fiction as my primary nonfiction indulgence since the mid 1970s. I love all sorts of SF (not a huge fan of short stories, TBH), from all sorts of eras from the Golden Age, New Wave, 2nd Golden Age, Rennaissance, Modern, Postmodern. Everything from Lensman to Asimov to LeGuin (some of my favorite) to Herbert to Saberhagen to Lem to Drake to Vinge to Willams to my personal probably fave, Iain Banks.
    This was, objectively, a terrible book. I blame at least part of it on a terribly clumsy translation. I don't read Chinese, but I do speak 2 other languages and can recognize that I think I'm not getting the flow/nuance/depth of a piece that's been superficially translated. Second, it was more of a 70s era trippy philosophical excursus than a determined story-delivering narrative. Character development was practically Brownian. Dialogue was stilted (could be translation), plot lines were either incoherent or predictable. I admit, Samuel R Delany was not my favorite era of SF either, and this is clearly of a flavor there. I plowed through all 3 books (incl Dark Forest and Death's End) to really give it a solidly fair shot.

    I regretted the waste of time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's not that good a book.

      Yeah, but you like to shit on everything that isn't 50s style zap gun cheese. Anyone can check your post history here on Slashdot. You have bad taste so chances are if you say it's bad then it's actually really great.

      • What?

        While I appreciate your ability to stalk my posts, I'm not sure your point?

        I haven't really gone into an exegesis of my Science Fiction aesthetic here, I'm pretty sure that enjoying everything from CS Lewis to Frank Herbert to Stanislaw Lem to Iain Banks to Wolfe, Heineman, LeGuin, etc pretty much qualifies as a broad range of tastes.

        I did hate Dhalgren, which is very much in kind with 3-Body Problem; I'm not a fan of hallucinogenic stream-of-consciousness garbage; I don't need to take my drug trips th

      • I'm a politically liberal (far left actually) sci-fi fan who likes authors such as Le Guin, and I concur that "Three Body Problem" is a horrible book.

        And FWIW, it actually has a fair bit of zap gun cheese. Very cheesy at that - some of the contraptions reminded me of the kind of stuff we came up with as 10 year old kids after reading too much cheesy sci-fi.

  • I have no idea why people gave it 5 stars.
    It might be the translation, or just cultural differences.
    Dialogue is wooden. The characters are flat as pancakes and asexual.
    Most are lonely, depressed and suicidal. Nihilistic.
    There are poetic descriptions with transparent, heavy-handed symbolism.
    The story has an arc, but boy, it meanders.
    Messages hidden deep in advanced literary analysis?

    Certainly written to be ideologically inoffensive to Chinese censors.
    Some sympathetic characters are Political commissars?
    Ano

  • If people RTFA, there's a lot of interesting nuances that go beyond the catchy headline and talk about Sci-Fi and China: the complexities around translating into English, especially from a high context culture that is relatively alien to most Westerners; the use of Sci-Fi domestically to critique the modern Chinese state and how increased censorship is putting a chill on that landscape; and a good profile on Ken Liu who in addition to being an excellent Chinese literature translator, which is no small feat,

  • I've been reading through recent hugo/nebula winners and just picked up this series (read the first two so far). It's a bit of a maddening experience to read it because it doesn't quite conform either to the standards of Western hard sci-fi or narrative structures that we're used to. I compare it to watching Chinese-made movies - odd pacing, weird leaps of logic, some things just plain implausible. Still I have enjoyed the books because experiencing something new and different is of interest to me. I don't

  • The New Yorker did a profile on Liu this summer: https://www.newyorker.com/maga... [newyorker.com]

    His most interesting comment is this: "If China were to transform into a democracy, it would be hell on earth.”

    He "briskly dismissed the idea that fiction could serve as commentary on history or on current affairs." In the Three Body Problem books, every time a government goes all-in on a big project, it's a group-think mistake that later becomes obvious. Liu also said “the relationship between politics and scien

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