Liu doesn't condemn the Cultural Revolution—he uses it as a teaching mechanism.
Ye Wenjie, watching intellectuals destroyed and her father murdered by the Red Guards, doesn't recoil into liberalism or democracy advocacy, but learns instead that human sentiment is a liability.
The Cultural Revolution becomes proof of concept: a system that could reorganize society instantly, eliminate dissent through shared terror, and mobilize millions toward a single purpose without requiring consent. When Ye transmits humanity's location to the Trisolaran civilization, she's not acting against the values the Revolution taught her—she's perfecting them.
The novel's Three-Body game operates on the same principle. Players aren't invited to solve the puzzle but to accept the puzzle's rules or die, so the game teaches surrender as strategy. When humanity later builds the Wallfacer project, it produces exactly what totalitarian systems always produce: a small elite making irreversible decisions for the entire species, justified by emergency.
Liu predicts nothing specific about climate or technology—he predicts the architecture of capitulation. Totalitarianism doesn't need to be imposed. It needs to be necessary.
Read Liu's 2008 essay 'The Dark Forest' (published separately from the novel) where he argues directly that survival may require abandoning individual rights—it's the philosophical skeleton the novel builds narrative flesh around.
Liu Ken's documentary 'Three-Body Problem: The Adaptation' (2023) includes an interview where Liu Cixin discusses why he kept the Cultural Revolution's role central even when adapting for international audiences—he explicitly rejects the Western reading that treats it as mere backstory.