Program on China tonight on BBC2 (4 episodes, on a week)

[Shadowdh]

Hi there all,

Thought some might be interested in the below, its in the UK starts tonight and runs for 4 weeks... (didnt know if this should go in the resource section as I view it for mainly study purposes or the tv section... hmmm the dilemmas we face...)

China

BBC 2 Tue Jun 13 9:00 PM

(60 min., Magazine/Report/Documentary)

Jonathan Lewis's groundbreaking documentary series about the world's most populous country and upcoming superpower. In this edition, he looks at how the country is run by its Communist leaders and how the economic boom has threatened stability. He joins guards patrolling the Kazakhstan border and party officials in Tibet as they try to impose authority.

Everywhere, the Chinese people speak frankly about the problems and challenges and about whether the Communist Party can retain its grip.

[BFC_Peter]

I had seen this series advertised but forgot about it and only caught the last ten minutes as I was watching Brazil play their first game.

Does anyone know if the programs will be repeated on any of the other BBC channels?

[adrianlondon]

From the Radio Times

We all know (and if we don't, the commentary here reminds us) that this could be China's century. But how does the country work? The idea of this series is to turn China from a daunting abstraction into something we can make sense of, via a series of slightly scattershot vignettes. In one of the most telling scenes, we see a Communist party official travel to a remote Tibetan village, where she tracks down the local "women's head" in a bare field and proceeds to grill her on how she has been promoting the party's line on family planning. It's like seeing a teacher admonish a child, a sense that continually emerges as we see officials nagging their charges to do better. At times it's almost comic, as if the busiest busybodies in the country had been put in charge - a nation of 1.3 billion people run as a nag-ocracy. This US/UK co-production takes an austere storytelling approach, but the picture that emerges is vivid - as is the scale of China's problems.

Damn. Wish I hadn't missed it! I tried to find out if it's repeated, but couldn't find any info. I guess that means they haven't planned to repeat it yet.

[Yang Rui]

There's probably a good chance it will be repeated on one of the BBC's digital channels i reckon.

A friend of mine who works at a newspaper has seen preview copies and he says the best of the series is yet to come anyway. This is what's coming up:

Tuesday 20th June: women - how the lives of women are changing. It focuses on women from the countryside. Heard this one is quite emotional.

Tuesday 27th June: the environment - quite shocking apparently

Tuesday 4th July: freedom and justice - apparently got some amazing footage. I'm looking forward to this one.

Last night's was very good. There was a classic scene with a Street Committee guy in Tibet going round pestering all the people in his area. Almost surreal. It's all Chinese (or Tibetan etc) people speaking, which makes a nice change ie not some stuffy professor at Berkeley or Harvard (who hasn't even been to China for 10 years) telling you what the Chinese are like. And the interviewees are surprisingly outspoken.

I'm definitely going to be glued to the others

[pookie]

Hiya,

It was quite good but not amazing.

My fav bits were that guy previously mentioned, telling people how to clean their shops. I love it when the Tibetan lady just nodded and made a noise - best way to react.

But the best part was seeing how the CPP justifies its support of a capitalist economy. They say that they are embracing capitalism because it is a key stage on the road to pure Communism, and that capitalism will give the people the tools they need to make pure communism work. Lol - whatever!!!

[Shadowdh]

Actually I believe that they have the correct there... apparantly capitalism is one of the stages needed to go through before pure communism can be reached... if you believe in that of course...

[dougm24]

Resurrecting this old thread. I recorded these programmes when they were first on TV and watched the last two of them again today (I saw they're for sale on taobao though - maybe not official copies though, ahem - in case anyone in China wants to watch them)

They're a fascinating set of programmes since without being over-critical they show an interesting picture of China that it's maybe difficult to find out from the local media. Like Yang Rui said Chinese people do the talking and they do talk very frankly about a lot of problems China is facing now.

Having done research in China though and being forced to be aware of the issues of anonymity and consent for participants, does anyone think it's unethical for the BBC to show people being openly critical of so many things in modern China? The last show in particular touches sensitive topics such as religious freedom and public protest. I thought it was fascinating to see these views and they obviously gave consent to be shown on camera, but it made me wonder if there were any consequences after the programme was broadcast.

Does anyone who's lived here for longer have any opinions about this?