Winning effort

With a second Chinese bagging the Hugo prize, expectations from the country's sci-fi writers are rising. Xinhua reports.

On Sunday, a second Chinese author received a prestigious Hugo Award for science fiction, this time in the category of best novelette. Hao Jingfang, author of Folding Beijing, won the award at the 74th World Science Fiction Convention in the United States following Liu Cixin's 2015 Best Novel award for The Three-Body Problem, the first part of a trilogy.

Established in 1953, the Hugo Awards acknowledge the best works in science fiction or fantasy and, along with the Nebula Awards, are seen as the top prizes in the genre. They are named after Hugo Gernsback, founder of the American science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. The best novelette prize has previously been won by such acknowledged greats as Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. LeGuin and George R.R.Martin.