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Innovation needed for China's sustainable development: renowned Chinese science fiction writer

Xinhua, November 3, 2015 Adjust font size:

China needs innovation and turning innovative ideas into reality to fuel its sustainable development, said a renowned Chinese science fiction writer on Tuesday evening.

Innovation has been a cornerstone of China's economic policies in the quest to shift economic growth model, Liu Cixin, the 2015 winner of the prestigious Hugo Prize told an overflowing auditorium at the University of Sydney on Tuesday evening.

"If a major power in the world wants to (rise), there must be a breakthrough to some extent... just like a science fictional event that has been turned into reality," Liu, arguably a 21st century philosopher, told 700 awe-struck students.

The rise of Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States as global powers happened only after scientific ideas being put into realities, Liu said.

For example, the rise of Britain came after the steam engine and industrialization and the United States through the information age, Liu said.

"All of these events were extremely hard to imagine previously. It was just like science fiction, some breakthroughs have been transformed into reality," Liu said.

If China continues to develop by using traditional and existing methods and trends, its current social and economic problems could not be eliminated, he warned.

Addressing concurrently the issue of global economic development and environmental protection might lead to the creation and formation of such a new method or trend, Liu said, as current methods don't eliminate the impact of global emissions on the environment.

Creating solar fields in outer space and transferring the energy back to earth might be a way out, an idea that has come from China's sci-fi writers that Liu is yet to develop.

"Space exploration is the only way to radically solve the problem on environmental protection and we think this may unexpectedly open a new market," Liu said, noting that may create a significant economic growth point not only for China, but the whole world as well. Endit