Science fiction in China was initially popularized through translations of Western authors during the late-Qing dynasty by proponents of Western-style modernization such as Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei as a tool to spur technological innovation and scientific progress.
In 1903, Lu Xun, who later became famous for his darkly satirical essays and short stories, translated Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and Journey to the Centre of the Earth from Japanese into Classical Chinese (rendering it in the traditional zhang wei ban style and adding expository notes) while studying medicine at the Kobun Institute (弘文學院 Kobun Gakuin) in Japan.
The earliest work of original science fiction in Chinese is believed to be the unfinished novel Lunar Colony (月球殖民地小說), published in 1904 by an unknown author under the pen name Old Fisherman of the Secluded River (荒江釣叟).
[2] Following the collapse of the Qing-dynasty in 1911, China went through a series of dramatic social and political changes which affected the genre of science fiction tremendously.
Zheng Wenguang in particular is known as the 'father of Chinese science fiction' for his writings during this period up until the beginning of Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) when the printing of non-revolutionary literature was suspended.
[4] Other important writers from this time period include Liu Xingshi, Wang Xiaoda, and Hong Kong author Ni Kuang.
In his monograph, Rudolf G. Wagner argues during this brief rebirth of science fiction in China scientists used the genre to symbolically describe the political and social standing to which the scientific community desired following its own rehabilitation.
This led to authors such as Ye Yonglie, Tong Enzheng, Liu Xingshi, and Xiao Jianheng being condemned for slander and the publication of science-fiction in mainland China once again being prohibited indefinitely.
In an article published in the Commercial Press's bi-monthly magazine on Chinese culture, The World of Chinese, Echo Zhao (赵蕾) describes his writing as being pervaded with "a sense of heroic morality" that avoids the "grim finality" of an apocalyptic future, citing examples of clones with bumps on their fingers to distinguish them from non-clones and robots whose hearts explode when they desire life.
His novel 2066: Red Star Over America which describes a Chinese invasion and takeover of the United States, and his short story collection Subway which features alien abductions and cannibalism on a never-ending train ride, have been lauded for their sense of social justice.
Meanwhile, in the area of film and television, works such as the science fiction comedy Magic Cellphone (魔幻手机) explored themes of time travel and advanced technology.
On March 31, 2011, however the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) issued guidelines that supposedly strongly discouraged television storylines including "fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and a lack of positive thinking".
This was to prove key to the survival of the RoC government, who were forced to move their capital to the island after their defeat by the communists in the Chinese Civil War.
The CNP pursued a policy of rapid sinification which, in combination with an influx of mainland intellectuals, spurred the development of Chinese-language literature in Taiwan and along with it, science fiction.
In Chinese, Hong Kong's best known science fiction author is the prolific Ni Kuang, creator of the Wisely Series (衛斯理).
More recently, Chan Koonchung's dystopian novel The Fat Years about a near future mainland China has been compared to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
[15] Huang Yi is another well known Wuxia and science fiction author whose time travel novel Xun Qin Ji (Chinese: 尋秦記) was adapted into a popular TV drama called A Step into the Past by TVB.