I've watched the first few episodes of Netflix's 3 Body Problem. They kept some core ideas and plot the same as the novel but otherwise changed a lot of the characters and setting from the novel. Not sure what to make of that yet...have to keep watching.
The beginning of episode 1 depicting Cultural Revolution in 1960s China was in the book too, although they changed the order of that event occuring (in the book, that scene occured later, whereas in the adaptation it started at the beginning, which was fine with the author apparently)...for those who want to know a little bit more about that period in Chinese history, it was a time of pure madness (almost in the literal sense). Chairman Mao, obsessed with class struggle campaigns, plunged China into never-ending series of political turmoil, starvation and poverty. Anyone deemed to be in the "wrong class" (i.e. landlords, former KMT member (rival party to the CCP that fled to Taiwan), intellectuals etc, can be targeted), were persecuted. After the failure of his campaigns (sometimes with catastrophic results of mass starvation), other communist leaders quietly sidelined Mao to stop further damage he could cause to the country. This brought some temporay relief from the insanity.
However Mao, being the megalomanic that he was, did not accept being shunted aside. In a strategy to eliminate his enemies (real or imagined) in the Communist Party of China, he created youth groups called "Red Guards" in 1966, each holding a little red book (consisting of Mao quotes). These red guards were fanatical foot soldiers of Mao, targeting first Mao's rivals, then spreading to targeting anything perceived to be "old" and "counter-revolutionary". Countless and priceless Chinese national treasures, in architecture, arts like painting or sculptures, were set alight, smashed into pieces or simply wipe from existence.
Worse, Mao order the red guards to turn against their own parents, their teachers and anyone deemed to be an intellectual. Families were destroyed. Teachers, intellectuals, artists and philosophers were tortured in "struggle sessions", where they were forced to kneel and "recant" their supposed sins against Mao and the communist cause. In many cases they were killed. Then this devolved almost into civil war in 1968-69, when different red guard factions started to target one another, claiming themselves to be the only ones to be truly loyal to Mao and others were mere pretenders. Schools were shut. Any kind of normal workplace, like most factories or office, were shut. The PLA had to be sent into the cities to maintain control and these red guard youths were ordered into the countryside for hard labor.
This period of insanity did not truly end until 1976 with Mao's death. His eventual successor, Deng Xiaoping, renounced the Cultural Revolution, ended class struggles, rehabilitated many of the surviving persecuted victims of the red guards and set the country to open up with economic reforms that save the country (basically it was turning China capitalist, although the Chinese communist could not use that term officially, rather it was "socialism with Chinese characteristics". Instead of class background determining your life in Mao's days, Deng famously said "it doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black as long as it catches the mice". This meant class struggles was worthless, rather its pragmatic and merit-based pursuit of well-being that matters (again very capitalistic in idea).
All that said, there were a few scientists, deemed as vital to China's security, that escaped persecution by the Red Guards. In real history, these were scientists and engineers who worked on rockets and nuclear weapons, deemed as necessary to deter the Soviet Union (which despite being a fellow communist country, China turned hostile on, as Mao thought the Soviets foresake the communist cause of Stalin). In the fictional history of the 3 Body Problem, it included Ye Wenjie. Seeing the madness around her (and arguably herself was also a victim of the Cultural Revolution), its not surprising to see her concluding that humanity was hopeless...
