In Liu Cixin’s extraordinary science- fiction novel The Three-Body Problem, China recklessly creates, then ingeniously solves, an existential threat to humanity. I remember thinking it was an odd plot when I read it last year. It is a Chinese scientist who reveals Earth’s location to the hostile planet Trisolaris, but it is another one who thwarts the Trisolaran invasion and saves the world.

This is not how sci-fi plots work in western literature. The bad guys (the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese or just the aliens) do bad stuff and then the good guys (they speak English) save the world. One of the many things I learnt from reading The Three-Body Problem is that, in this respect as in so many others, China is