> A big clue comes from the author Neil Gaiman’s collection of non-fiction essays, The View from the Cheap Seats, where he relates an anecdote from the time he attended the 2007 China SF/Fantasy Conference in Chengdu:
> “A few years ago, in 2007, I went to China for the first-ever, I believe, state-sponsored science fiction convention, and at some point I remember talking to a party official who was there and I said, ‘Up until now I have read in Locus that your lot disapprove of science fiction and you disapprove of science fiction conventions and these things have not been deliberately encouraged. What’s changed? Why did you permit this thing? Why are we here?’
> ‘And he said, ‘Oh you know for years, we’ve been making wonderful things. We make your iPods. We make phones. We make them better than anybody else, but we don’t come up with any of these ideas. So we went on a tour of America talking to people at Microsoft, at Google, at Apple, and we asked them a lot of questions about themselves, just the people working there. And we discovered they all read science fiction… so we think maybe it’s a good thing.”
> The more things change, the more they remain the same. Lu Xun in 1903 had written that ‘science fiction could play a crucial role in the advancement of the Chinese nation’ and 104 years later, the purpose of the 2007 Chengdu SF/F Conference seems to have been no different for it was described as ‘an ambitious Chinese effort designed to inspire public creativity toward future scientific and technological development as well as promote national insight for scientific exploration’. A laudable step towards sparking the imagination and fostering innovation, but the state support of science fiction is also about advancing China’s soft power. As the writer Chen Quifan said in a speech (co-written by the organisers) at the eighth Chinese Nebula Awards in November 2017, saying that the purpose of Chinese science fiction was to, “grasp what General Secretary Xi has put forward, and advance the establishment of the power of the international spread of the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics, in order to tell the China story.”
Now China thrives on closing down churches, jailing pastors, censoring 'sensitive' materials in Hong Kong, indoctrinate muslims to eat pork and drink beer, etc etc etc.
Doubt any book of significance will arise in this environment
Although the ones I've read have been remixing Cthulhu with Cyberpunk so I might be digressing. Also note that most Chinese modern sci-fi now begin life as internet and web forum novels because the web is the most important and fast-spreading medium for Chinese fiction readers now.
As well, near-future sci-fi and most importantly those kind of TV shows are pretty much banned in China.