https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j577z3/the-wandering-earth-what-western-media-got-wrong-about-chinas-sci-fi-blockbuster

Last month during Lunar New Year, I watched China’s sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth in a packed theater in Beijing. The film is a post-apocalyptic tale set in the future about Earth’s imminent crash into another planet and a group of family members and soldiers’ efforts to save it. Directed by Frank Gwo and based on a short story by acclaimed sci-fi writer Liu Cixin, The Wandering Earth has become the second-highest grossing non-English film of all time and has received a limited release in the US. Netflix has also recently announced plans to distribute the film worldwide.

In a time in which the US is accusing and imprisoning Chinese people for espionage and the US-China trade war is increasingly contentious, the Western media’s reaction to The Wandering Earth provides a lens to understand the West’s greater narratives about China. Despite the film’s rich critiques and commentary on capitalism, Western hegemony, and the US, the West’s media has largely ignored the film’s actual content. Instead, they have projected Orientalist tropes onto the film.