Liu Cixin, author of The Three-Body Problem, signs a book for a fan at a forum in Beijing in September 2018. Photo: VCG

Chinese analysts slammed US Republican senators for desperately hyping every China-related topic out of deep panic during its election campaign, and advised the US to learn from China's Xinjiang policy to lower its crime rate, after five US senators urged Netflix to reconsider plans to adapt a Chinese science-fiction trilogy into a TV series. 

In a letter to Netflix, five Republican senators, including Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Rick Scott of Florida, claimed that the company's decision to adapt Chinese author Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem trilogy amounted to "normalization" of the Chinese government's "crimes," as Liu defended the Chinese government's Xinjiang policy in an interview with the New Yorker magazine in 2019. 

"If anything, the government is helping their economy and trying to lift them out of poverty," Liu said in the interview.

Netflix announced in early September that the trilogy about man's first contact with an alien civilization will be adapted as a Netflix series. 

Liu later tweeted that it was a great honor as an author to see the sci-fi concept gain fans across the world. 

Western countries led by the US have frequently smeared China's Xinjiang policy, slandering Xinjiang's anti-terrorism and de-radicalization measures.

Liu and Netflix did not immediately comment on the senators' remarks. 

Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times on Saturday that Republican senators spared no efforts before the November presidential elections to create China-related issues, in a bid to shift Americans' attention from the Republican Party's nasty presidential campaign. 

"They politicized everything between China and the US out of deep despair over the party's campaign, as if it could make Americans forget the death of over 200,000 Americans from the COVID-19 pandemic," Lü said. 

Blackburn and Scott have participated in or led China-related proposals and frequently made groundless remarks on China this year on issues like Taiwan and China's handling of COVID-19, to make anti-China agenda part of their narrative. 

In March, Scott introduced a bill banning all federal employees from using TikTok on government devices. This month, he introduced the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act, which would allow the US to use military force on Taiwan. 

Blackburn has frequently slandered China over its response to COVID-19, and introduced a bill with other senators to sue China. 

Lü said Xinjiang has not seen a single terror incident in the past three years thanks to effective anti-terrorism measures adopted by the regional government. The US, which is struggling to lower its crime rate, should learn from Xinjiang. 

"Xinjiang could offer lessons to the US in lowering its youth crime rate," he said.