Following its March 15 Netflix debut, the animated sci-fi series Love, Death & Robots has attracted over 100,000 comments and a score of 9.3 on China’s social media network Douban. To put that into perspective, Wolf Warrior 2 , the highest-grossing film in China – shown on more than 19,000 cinema screens – has had around 620,000 comments and a score of 7.1 mark on the same site. Netflix is not available in China, and with the series’ propensity for titillation, it will probably never officially be shown there. How, then, has it carved out a niche following? Hard-core sci-fi fans and housebound gamers have built a Chinese subculture on the lookout for cutting-edge cinematic expressions in tune with their virtual lives. It certainly does not hurt that the masterminds behind the shows – David Fincher of House of Cards and Tim Miller of Deadpool – are well known. Even People’s Daily and Xinhua republished a review of the series from The Beijing News . Love, Death & Robots is a series of 18 standalone films of disparate themes, styles and lengths (6-18 minutes), that has been compared to “an R-rated take on the Black Mirror formula”. In a society where short videos have become a predominant form of creative expression, Chinese netizens think these episodes are meant to be consumed within the time span of a bowl of instant noodles. More importantly, as Kai-Fu Lee argues in AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order , while the US leads in AI discoveries, China leads in AI implementation. It’s no exaggeration to say AI is now inscribed into China’s “national psyche”, with shows such as CCTV’s Artificial Intelligence vs Human Intelligence and Hunan TV Network’s I am the Future turning robots into household names. Also, Chinese fans believe that The Wandering Earth has ushered in an age of sci-fi films in China. With Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang winning the Hugo Award in 2015 and 2016, sci-fi has become the stage to showcase China’s new literary talent, drawn to the energy and escapism, as well as a world of less political sensitivity. In Love, Death & Robots , viewers may find references to China as the exotic “other”. In When the Yogurt Took Over , Yogurt communicates with human beings, demanding to occupy Ohio. When humanity’s leaders laugh at this idea, Yogurt responds with a threat to go to China. Women filmmakers of China still in shadow of male counterparts And a futuristic Hong Kong street scene is the backdrop for The Witness , where a woman tries to escape a man she witnesses killing a victim who looks exactly like her. She then leads the murderer to a sex shop, where she shoots him dead, only to look out of a window and see that an exact replica of the man has witnessed the killing. But the episode that most resonates with Chinese viewers is Good Hunting, an adaptation of a steampunk story by Chinese-American Ken Liu. Liu has won the Hugo Award for his own writing and also, thanks to his translations, has been instrumental in Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang’s triumphs. The short film alludes to Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio , a collection of Classical Chinese stories prominently featuring ghosts, foxes, immortals and demons by Pu Songling. It begins with a sorcerer teaching his son Liang how to catch a female fox spirit. Later in colonial Hong Kong, Liang becomes a railroad mechanic and develops a friendship with the fox spirit’s daughter Yan, a sex worker. Yan was mutilated by the governor (a Westerner), who is sexually aroused by prosthetics. Liang uses his skills to turn the fox-woman into a robot that eventually destroys the governor. Politics at play: Why The Wandering Earth may not go far in Hong Kong Good Hunting is therefore a fable for China’s “regeneration” through technology, reminiscent of the motto “mastering Westerners’ technology to counter the West”. During the 19th and 20th centuries, this expression was one of the most frequently cited ideas in China’s debate about modernisation and Westernisation. With beloved robots, China will seek to reclaim its place in a new world. Similarly, sci-fi will become the vehicle for the Chinese to tell their stories about modernity and futurism. But, as with scientific innovation, China’s creative industries will benefit from an environment that embraces experimentation rather than prohibition. Chiu-Ti Jansen, with advanced degrees from Yale and Columbia, is the founder of multimedia platform China Happenings and a former corporate partner of international law firm Sidley Austin