Poster of China's homemade sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth II Photo: Courtesy of Maoyan

"You can imagine it, we will make it happen," said state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), while expressing its support for homemade sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth II.

Many leading industrial enterprises in China, including China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) and China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSTC), have joined CNNC one after another, promising to contribute to "turning science fiction into reality."

The encouraging and stirring promise was posted by CNNC on its official Weibo account on Sunday evening, hours before the box office for The Wandering Earth II hit 2.7 billion yuan ($400 million).

The tweet showed a poster including the Earth planetary engine and China's new "artificial sun" device (HL-2M), led by CNNC, as well as the China Circulator II A (HL-2A) device, with the caption "We are committed to turning science fiction into reality."

In 2022, a new breakthrough was made in scientific research for the new generation "artificial sun" in China with its HL-2M plasma current exceeding 1 million amperes, creating a new record for the operation of a controllable nuclear fusion device in the country.

The film's portrayal of a Chinese-led planetary engine project is made plausible by China's world-leading nuclear fusion prowess. As film director Guo Fan previously wrote in an article published in People's Daily, "Only a strong country can support a strong science fiction industry."

Whether it is to one day realize the movie's vision of propelling the Earth out of the Solar System toward another habitable star system or to work on the construction of heavy industry, China's leading enterprises in this field have always been working together.

CASIC expressed its willingness to cooperate under CNNC's post. "Are we not supposed to do this together?" CASIC asked.

Meanwhile, China Unicom and China Telecom have offered to shoulder the burden of communication.

The interaction between these leading enterprises also aroused the enthusiasm of netizens. "What kind of dream linkage is this?" one netizen wrote on the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo.

Another netizen from Shanghai wrote that indeed The Wandering Earth II gives us a glimpse of China's future technological development through sci-fi films, and there is no doubt that the contribution of these enterprises is incalculable.

It's also worth noting that these enterprises are all sanctioned by the US, which aims to stop China's technological development due to fears that China might achieve what happens in the movie, the netizen added.

Global Times