Sci-fi author Liu Cixin's Three-Body trilogy has not only put the media spotlight on Chinese sci-fi, but also drawn wider attention to the once small science-fiction market in China. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"We only choose to publish books that could become a phenomenon," says Zhang Xuesong, editor-in-chief of Insight Media, who imported Hugh Howey's Silo Saga into China.

On the Chinese website of Amazon.com, the only Chinese writer who squeezes in the top 50 bestsellers in sci-fi novels is Liu. The rest are all translated works by Western writers.

A similar situation happened with popular science books.

"Although there are thousands of popular science books published every year, the first-class works are mostly written by Western writers," says Sun Guijun, editor-in-chief of Hunan Science and Technology Press, which imported A Brief History of Time and The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking.

Sun says that the sales of Chinese version of A Brief History of Time has exceed 1 million copies since it was first translated into Chinese in 1991.

Zhang Siying, deputy editor-in-chief who is in charge of the popular science books section at Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, expresses similar opinion that compared to the West, the tradition of scientists writing popular science books in China is not that strong.

Zhang has organized a project to translate and import selected articles from the science journal Nature since 2012. Through the project, she met many Chinese scientists and asked them to write popular science books for Chinese young readers.

The first two books of the series－one on astronomy and one on anthropology－were published in May.

"The lack of incentive mechanisms for scientists to write popular science books is the main reason for the lack of such books in China," says Zhang. "Therefore, the scientists who write for us are all established scientists who do not have pressing scientific research to attend to."