Just never popular, and not making any headway 

I guess sci-fi in general just isn't popular in China? Or is that misconception?

China loves Fast & Furious and Transformers, both are bigger movie franchises there than Star Wars or even Marvel.

Star Wars has never really caught on there. If Disney wants a Star Wars movie to do big bucks there they need to cast Vin Diesel in the lead. 

I really don't know to be honest. I wouldn't necessarily assume they're not into sci-fi as a whole though

Lol.  I saw one from ComicBooks.com, from just today, talking about how it is the highest rated Sci-Fi movie on Rotten Tomatoes.  Uh, wasn't that the case the week it came out?  Why the damage control as we are headed into Feb?  Of course, I'm sure they didn't acknowledge that it's probably the lowest user rated Sci-Fi movie, as well. 

Though, I have read a few articles from Forbes highlighting the failures of this movie, i.e. large dropoff from TFA and it bombing in China.  Guess it just depends on the writer.

Yep.  Didn't even make it to two full weeks, ending with $41.3M. A far cry from TFA's $124.2M.  It didn't even match TLJ's opening weekend of $52.3M. 

I haven't gone back to look at a bunch of films, so it may be possible, but that's not what happened here.  I know Avatar did incredibly well there, grossing $204.1M.  Even if Sci-Fi isn't as large there, in general, you can still post some large numbers.  GOTG did $86.3M over there.  That's pretty good for an unknown IP with no huge names in the film.  And GOTG Vol 2 grew that, grossing $100.7M.  I'd say Thor: R was pretty heavy on the Sci-Fi, and that did $112.2M.

No, the problem is that TLJ was just not well received.  I have read that the OG trilogy gets played on TV over there every now and then, so its not like they hated the franchise.  And like I posted above, TLJ did $124.2M.  Disney had a chance to grow SW in China to a much larger extent, but this movie was not the one to attempt that with.  If anything, it just made them less interested in the franchise, at least the new ones.  And there's just no getting around this fact.  Even the Sci-Fi flop Valerian performed better in China, grossing $62.1M.

Casually cracked the Top Ten and surpassed Frozen.
Outperformed Rogue One by 25%.
Fell less than Empire S.E. vs Hope S.E.
All this with plenty of competition for the same target audience.

The fans have spoken, indeed!

Lol, keep on reaching.  Especially with that weak S.E. comparison.  Oh boy.

Here's the numbers that Disney, and investors, care about.  ~36% down.  ~$740M down.  And it has had worse legs than RO, being outperformed by it for the past 17 days.  Meaning that without that hyped up weekend, it would have barely outperformed RO.  Currently, outside of opening weekend it is a mere 7% above it, and it will continue to fall.  A freaking spinoff vs a main installment.  And given that it has already lost ~60% of its screenings, it is looking unlikely it will stay in theaters as long as TFA and RO did.  Finally, and probably more importantly, merchandise sales are down when compared to TFA and RO, as well.  Yea, I'm sure they are ecstatic with these results. 

This thread is still going on?

As long as TLJ is still in theaters the thread will still go on.

At 1.3 Billion, one no longer has to reach.  You can comfortably look down on the entirety of DC films from that height.  It's now up to other movies to reach for The Top Ten, while TLJ smiles happily down upon them.