Were we reading the same books? With all the Cultural Revolution trauma in Three Body Problem?
That is the only one of the three I've read, but to me a huge theme was information control. The cultural revolution as the historical event, and the single-particle invasion fleet interfering with humanity's science as the futuristic event. Both analogies for each other. And the ambivalent question underlying it of "what if this is necessary for survival"?
Edit: In reply to Aeolun (couldn't see a reply button below your post):
ehhh, Ye Wenjie is fairly central in the first book (I'm halfway past the second one)
Do you mean something different?
The whole section of the book/civilization where everyone is feminized and most of the toxic male behaviors have been repressed is depicted as a "bad thing" leading to weak people and a weak civilization.
The first book was decent, certainly good, science fiction, with an endearing new scooby mystery at every chapter leading into another mystery. But the other two were bad. Going on in bad tolkien-ism (I've beared reading the Silmarillion three times) with overlong descriptions of unimportant details and derailing into ideology every two paragraphs.
Try to put the PC for our time aside, and think about this again. In the cold and cruel universe, what would survive?
Advance, advance at all costs.
Edit:
You don’t have to save the universe in bold to become a character.
Being paper thin and then destroy the 3 dimensional universe, on behalf of the will of mankind?
Also, the goal isn't/shouldn't be growth at all cost in a story. The axiom of Liu Cixin is his theory of "The Dark Forest", which is what it is, a literary axiom, not an universal truth.
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Chen Xin is selected to represent the will of the mankind (or she would've been purged quickly after showing the inabilities) so the character should be thin in this sense, which reflects the very opposite character, `Thomas Wade`.
So I understand the story as, that humanity chose to destroy itself in honor of what they value.
I interpreted it differently, the fact that some male characters can be less empathetic and could potentially solve some crisis does not mean that all men or all women are X, I am bad with names so I don't remember them, but in the end why did the man let her take the final decision about the secret project/attack ? (it seemed out of character or a way to place the hard decision on other IMO)
One of the most out of character decisions event in the books. As with any "out of character action" a character can take, the blame lies in the author. Like in the question "who would win between Superman and Goku ?" the answer is in the author, not the characters. The author forced a narrative to prove the point that Cheng Xin wasn't able to do the hard choices.