The Paradigm Divergence of Collective Redemption and Individual Awakening: The Ethical Narrative of Chinese and Western Science Fiction—A Comparative Study Centered on Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem and Asimov’s Foundation

Abstract

In an era of globalization crises, Chinese science fiction offers international academia an opportunity to re-examine narrative ethics. This paper compares Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem with Asimov’s Foundation, employing narratology and ethical criticism to analyze the divergence between Chinese collectivism and Western individual heroism. Western science fiction, rooted in Greek epics and Enlightenment rationalism, constructs a narrative of “individual genius saving civilization”, following “awakening—power struggle—linear progress”. Chinese science fiction, grounded in Confucian “tianxia” and modern “national salvation” discourse, forms an ethics of “collective sacrifice”, manifesting as “crisis—institutional response—civilizational survival”. Comparing the “Wallfacer Project” with “psychohistory” and the “Swordholder” with the “Second Foundation”, this study reveals divergent ontological premises: “individual existence precedes the collective” versus “collective survival takes priority over the individual”. Combining reception data of The Three-Body Problem’s English translation with the Netflix adaptation controversy, the paper argues that Western readers’ shock at the “Dark Forest Theory” represents an encounter between two civilizational ethics. Chinese science fiction’s collectivist narrative does not negate individual value but provides literary imagination for “a community with a shared future for mankind”, contributing an irreplaceable paradigm to global science fiction’s ethical diversity.