The Undeclared War, Season Two, on Peacock

Bizarrely, some politicians who are hawkish on Russia are weak on China—and vice versa. Yet, the two totalitarian regimes have clearly been increasingly acting in concert. The Axis of Authoritarians is very real, as GCHQ, the UK’s equivalent of the NSA, is about to learn the very hard way. In the first season, the British government barely survived a highly coordinated Russian cyber-attack. However, the Chinese Communist spy masters will be revealed as the true architects of the plan, which has further stages yet to be unleashed in the second season of creators Peter Cosminsky & Colin Callender’s The Undeclared War, premiering this week on Peacock.

Much to the chagrin of Danny Patrick, GSHQ’s Chief of Operations, the crisis is not yet over. The cyber-attack originating in Russia, compromised both British and American data. The “Special Relationship” was almost irreparably ruptured and the UK was nearly tricked into launched an attack against Russia that would have appeared unprovoked to the rest of the world. In foiling these plans, Saara Parvin, the intern who became Patrick’s trusted ally, created a secret back door into the Russian FSB’s system, scraping intel that partially regained the American government’s confidence.

Parvin also receives crucial information (and a plea for help) from her former friend, Vadim Trusov, a Russian hacker turned confidential informant. GSHQ assumed the FSB took Trusov into custody to imprison and interrogate him. Instead, they shipped him off to a secret Chinese facility to work on the next stage of the operation.

The next wave of malware from China initially only targets the Transportation and Trade Ministries, but it is only a matter of time before it jumps into national security systems. Consequently, Patrick makes the unprecedented decision to completely shut down both Ministries systems. That earns him the wrath of Richard Marston, the freshly appointed Foreign Minister, and Prime Minister Andrew Makinde (only appearing in recaps of the first season), who have staked their careers on a negotiating a blockbuster trade deal with the Mainland regime.

Suddenly, Patrick’s wife, Barbara Napier, is in the thick of the crisis. The former MI6 agent currently serves as the head of GSHQ’s China team. Awkwardly, someone in Napier’s division might be directly implicated in the malware attack.

The first season of Undeclared War convincingly dramatized the democratic Western world’s vulnerabilities to cyberterrorism and its political leaders’ inability to match the long-term strategic thinking of our adversaries. Frustratingly, it also wasted a good deal of time exploring Parvin’s sexuality and her conflicted relationships with Muslim family. Season two corrects those mistakes, jettisoning Parvin’s box-checking subplots, focusing instead on the espionage and geopolitics at-hand. The only personal lives meriting screentime this season are those of Patrick and Napier, whose marriage will be greatly strained by the secrets they must keep from each other.

Frankly, season two has a “ripped-from-the-headlines” urgency that makes it alarmingly timely and realistic. Makinde’s dogged pursuit of the trade deal mirrors Starmer’s recent record of capitulation to the CCP, especially his support for the proposed Chinese mega-embassy, which national security specialists identified as a danger to UK communications systems, given its location, perched above a crucial nexus of fiber optic cables. Indeed, season two unambiguously identifies the CCP regime as a threat to the democratic way of life, but also gives credit to free-thinking Chinese dissenters.

Wham! 10 Days in China

They were like the Richard Nixon of pop acts. When they went to China, it was a bold career. In fact, the notoriety launched the American publicity campaign for George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, the British duo billed as Wham! It was an expensive and hectic tour, but it accomplished it objective, breaking the band into the American market. Footage shot for the little-seen documentary covering their historic gigs have now been restored and repurposed into Mike Christie’s Wham! 10 Days in China, which releases tomorrow in theaters.

The group’s former manager makes it clear right from the start their Chinese concerts were all about the American publicity. It is important to understand how different China was in 1985. The notoriously closed nation was starting to open up. Glasnost had been proclaimed in the USSR one month prior. Optimism was breaking out internationally and would steadily build until the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. Wham! performing in China was seen as a sign of the changing (for the better) times.

Michael and Ridgeley got the concept of using China as an international fame slingshot, but they did not enjoy it, judging from the tour footage. It probably did not help that they chose the wrong director to helm the behind-the-scenes documentary. “Angry Young Man” filmmaker Lindsay Anderson (who directed If… and O Lucky Man) broke his leg soon after arriving in China and took an even quicker disliking to the Wham! lads.

You can also see early tension within the duo when Michael bails on press events, leaving Ridgeley (who had far more contentious relations with the press at that stage of their careers) holding the bag. However, the 1985 Ridgeley seems to show genuine interest in the young Chinese fans who were only just discovering Western pop through special distributions of their current album (mostly on cassette, even though players were then scarce in the Peoples Republic).

For obvious reasons, only Ridgeley was available to add his recent commentary. However, he comes across quite graciously. Perhaps even more intriguing are the segments featuring young Chinese fans, who were inspired to pursue careers in popular music.

In fact, listening to them makes it blindingly obvious that Christie refused to connect some rather important dots. By and large, the majority of patrons for the Wham! concerts were roughly high school aged. That would put them in college when University students took the lead protesting Chinese Communist Party corruption and oppression during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Demonstrations. This age group essentially became China’s lost generation, when they were either killed or forced into exile as a result of the Party’s crackdown. Consequently, it seems reasonable to assume that in addition to future Chinese pop stars, many of those who attended the 1985 shows are now dead or permanently cut off from their families and homes.

ND/NF ’26: Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest

What is it like to come out as non-binary in today’s China? Artist-filmmaker Viv Li is reluctant to find out. To a large degree, she has adopted the norms and values of the Grman hipster art-world, but she still wants to identify as Chinese. Through her very personal lens, the audience gets an unvarnished perspective on both worlds in Li’s Two Mountains Weighing Down on My Chest, which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Weirdly, there just might be something to annoy everyone in Li’s film, which is absolutely a point in its favor. Through her German friends she engages in various forms of nudist “decadence” (as the Maoists back home might say). Indeed, a great deal of the pretentious art produced by her circle will truly underwhelm the average working-class stiff, from either China or the West.

Yet, when Li returns home, she is clearly put off by her relatives’ idolization of Mao and Xi. She tries to hold her tongue and avoid politics, but she has to scoff when they claim the majority of American homes lack basic necessities, like electrified power. Indeed, regardless, of your take on the art produced by Li’s friends, her film vividly documents the dubious nature of CCP propaganda and just how desperately older Chinese generations want to believe it.

120 Bahadur: Heroism in the India-China War

Why would any country ever trust the CCP's PRC? After all, India considered China a close friend and ally, yet the Communist regime launched the 1962 India-China War for the purpose of annexing resource-rich territory. Granted, that was over sixty years ago, but the same oppressive Communist Party still rules with an iron fist. Since then, relations between the two BRIC’s have been interesting. Likewise, the results of the short war were complicated. It is generally conceded that India lost, but it would have been much worse were it not for Maj. Shaitan Singh Bhati’s last stand at the Battle of Rezang La, dramatized in Razneesh “Razy” Ghai’s 120 Bahadur, which releases tomorrow for Prime subscribers in most territories.

Much to India’s shock and outrage (made clear by Amitabh Bachchan’s Morgan Freeman-esque narration), China used a flimsy pretext to invade across the Northeast border, near Bhutan. Fortunately, the resourceful and inspiring Singh had been assigned to Charlie Company, but, ironically, he was put in command of the storied Kumaon Regiment, which by that point, consisted solely of green provincial recruits, who had never experienced snow or high altitude.

The Regiment also gets a new radio operator, Sepoy Ramchander Yadav, transferred straight from a quiet office assignment. He just begs for regimental hazing, even though Singh discourages such practices. Naturally, the Major immediately recognizes the narrow Rezang La pass as the spot the Red Army will press their advance on the crucial Chushul Airfield. Consequently, only Singh’s 120 men will be there to stop them.

There might be some spin added, but screenwriter Rajiv G. Menon’s presentation of the Battle of Rezang La largely conforms to accepted history. As a winter storm approached, the 120 held off the thousand-plus-strong Red Army long enough to close the window on Chushul. It would also take several months for the Indian Army to determine their fate, because the snow-covered battlefield had frozen solid, even though the fictional composite Yadav lived to tell their story.

Obviously, 120 Bahadur never opened in China. Most likely, the studio never even tried. Somewhat oddly, the regular Indian non-commissioned soldiers rarely refer to the PRC directly. However, Ghai pulls no punches when depicting the carnage left behind when the PLA massacres the entire village of Chagga. The film also suggests Mao micromanaged every tactical decision of the Red Army, through his ventriloquist dummy intermediary, General Gao.

Don’t panic. There are also several musical numbers. Mostly they are Singh’s flashbacks to his courtship of Shugan Kanwari Singh and their early wedded bliss. Frankly, Ghai skillfully integrates them, so they are not as tonally jarring as you would assume. However, none of the tunes is particularly memorable.

Still, the dance numbers certainly prove Farhan Akhtar’s versatility. He has decent moves and seriously steely screen presence. Although not as buff as Salman Khan, he has a Jon Bernthal vibe that serves the picture well. Indeed, Akhtar’s forcefulness is intrinsic to the film’s best scene, introducing viewers to Singh, as he faces down a PLA sniper.

Mistress Dispeller

Apparently, this phenomenon is a by-product of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The regime might like to boast of “traditional Chinese values” and “thousands of years of Chinese culture,” but one of the Mainland’s fastest growing service industries seeks to separate unfaithful husbands from their mistresses. For a top performer like Wang Zhenxi, business is booming. Elizabeth Lo follows Wang as she targets her latest love-triangle in “Mistress Dispeller,” which opens today in New York.

Eventually, Mr. and Mrs. Li and well as Fei Fei, the other woman, consented to the release of Lo’s highly revealing documentary. Presumably, it helped that the Hong Kong-born Lo agreed to never screen the film in China—which was a small concession, considering the remote likelihood Mistress Dispeller would be approved for theaters in the tightly closed Mainland market.

Having secretly discovered her husband’s affair, Mrs. Li seeks out Wang on the advice of her brother, who was once on the other side of her sleuthing. Soon, Wang is charming Mr. Li in the guise of his wife’s badminton buddy. Frankly, it is a good thing Wang works as a private fidelity cop, because could easily fleece plenty of marks as a con artist.

Indeed, Wang soon has Mr. Li confessing to the affair and agreeing to arrange a meeting for her with Fei Fei, his mistress. Yet, in this case, terms like “affair” and “mistress” almost seem a bit too strong. He has clearly played sugar daddy because he is intoxicated by her youth, while she has accepted his support out of economic need—and both feel guilty about it.

In fact, all three interested parties are riddled with insecurities and neuroses. As a result, it is relatively easy for Wang to sever the affair. Instead of passionate drama, the documentary is mostly defined by gloominess and regret.

Yellow Singing Sail, Graphic Novel

Huang Yinfin (a.k.a. “Yinyin”) is an only child. So are nearly all her classmates. It is almost like there was a rigid government policy restricting Chinese families to one child in the 1990s. In fact, there was exactly such a policy, but she never mentions it during this graphic novel memoir, probably she would not have been aware of such realities during her elementary school years. Regardless, many of the memories from her childhood remained sufficiently fresh to inspire Huang’s Yellow Singing Sail, illustrated by the author, which releases today.

Ironically, around her fifth birthday, Yinyin was living in the countryside, much like the regime had mandated for all its subjects two decades prior. Unfortunately, the little girl experiences strife once her parents move to the industrial city of Guangzhou.

Unable to afford their own flat, Yinyin and her parents must stay with her Aunt Guma and Uncle Guye, who is a member of the state police force. Unfortunately, they are more opportunistic than hospitable when it comes to their new living arrangement, while Guma is often downright mean towards Yinyin’s mother.

Although Huang never directly addresses the “One Child” policy, there several surprisingly telling episodes. Considering Beijing’s war on Cantonese in Hong Kong, many readers will be shocked to read how Yinyin struggled to perfect her fluency to impress the Cantonese speaking “cool kids” in her Guangzhou classes.

Arguably, even an incident when young Huang discovers their six-floor walk-up apartment was broken into challenges regime propaganda claiming an absence of common street crime. Still, much of Yinyin’s school drama is presented in a way that suggests a universality of such formative experiences.

ND/NF ’25: Stranger

In China, your hotel room is considered a public area rather than a private space. That is not my hyperbole. Those are the words of two cops conducting a snap inspection in this film. The comparative privacy of hotel rooms is important in this film, because every scene is set in a very different rented room, which together create a complex mosaic of Chinese society in Yang Zengfan’s Stranger, which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Everyone is a stranger in a hotel, unless its Fawlty Towers. You might be better off with Basil Fawlty’s chaotic staff, considering the housekeeper in the opening longshot vignette, who does her cleaning while wearing a guest’s flight attendant uniform.

Perhaps the best scene follows, in a much dingier room. Those are the temporary quarters shared by the two men a pair of police officers have come to investigate. However, they instinctively understand the best defense is a good offense, so they do their best to disrupt the interrogatory process. The cops cannot even explain why they are here, but viewers will soon infer their suspected transgression might be sexual in nature. Regardless, this is by far the tensest, most dramatic segment of Stranger, which directly compares to the Iranian film Terrestrial Verses, both in terms of theme and potency.

Unfortunately, other segments are not as well served by Yang’s static camera placement and long takes. Sometimes it works brilliantly, as when the restlessly panning camera reveals why the groom looks so miserable at his own wedding reception. The sequence following a disgraced Chinese influencer live-streaming her endlessly extended COVID-quarantine also vividly recreates the grim, lonely realities of ‘Covid-Zero” China, but it just continues the sense of ennui rather than building into a memorable statement.

Perhaps the second most pointed episode captures a pregnant woman and her husband the night before she leaves for America as a delivery-tourist. They express nothing but contempt for our country and its values, yet they are going to great lengths to secure their unborn child’s birthright citizenship. You would almost think this was a MAGA-directed segment, which earns Yang great credit for artistic integrity.

Doc Fortnight ’25: So Close, So Far

Zhu Zhilang is like a Chinese Willy Loman. He is desperate to be liked and he always believes his next big score is right around the corner. It is easy to understand why his son (and documentary profiler) has run out of patience with his spendthrift ways. However, it is harder to blame him for thinking China’s state-owned industries and public-private partnerships would be good for their debts. Unfortunately, when the Chinese real estate bubble burst, it derailed the massive development that subcontracted his design company and cratered his finances as a result. Zhu Yudi follows his semi-estranged father as he drifts from collecting bad debts to new ill-conceived schemes in So Close, So Far, which screens as part of MoMA’s 2025 Documentary Fortnight.

It had been a few years Zhu had been in contact with his father, but he agreed to join him on his annual debt-collecting trip. Zhu pere’s company contracted to supply and install marble and decorative elements of the ostentatious lobbies of the huge complex’s uncompleted buildings. However, he had yet to be paid a Yuan as the film opens.

Like a true Gen-Z’er, the filmmaker audibly cringes as his father sucks up to the various bosses and decision-makers, hoping someone will authorize a payment. Eventually, the elder Zhu secures a paltry partial-payment, which he gambles away online that very night.

This represents a continuing pattern for Zhu, whose multi-million Yuan debt has also engulfed his very angry wife. Despite it all, the senior Zhu is always receptive when a dubious crony pitches him another sure-fire scheme. Honestly, it is often painful to watch.

Still, from a Western perspective, you would assume the government and its various partnerships ought to be good for their debts. Okay, stop laughing all you Libertarians out there. Regardless, governmental-partners should not be acting like dine-and-dashers running out on their restaurant tabs. Clearly, the public-partnerships involved are byzantine in their complexity, presumably allowing local authorities considerable insulation. Yet, the bottom line is small contractors like Zhu’s dad get stiffed.

Doc Fortnight ’25: 14 Paintings (short)

It turns out China applied the same strategies to the fine arts as they have in manufacturing. First copy, then ramp up production to enjoy economies of scale, and finally develop new innovations of their own. Viewers will likely conclude the approach worked better for electronics than on the canvases churned out in the officially designated artists’ city of Dafen. Viewers see fourteen such “products” in Dongnan Chen’s short documentary, 14 Paintings, which screens as part of MoMA’s 2025 Documentary Fortnight.

Originally, Dafen was a factory town, where painters churned out copies of Western masters, on an industrial level. Creativity was necessarily stifled. Then the state planners shifted gears, mandating artistic originality. However, it seems like they still sell in volume, given how many Dafen paintings are now displayed in commercial settings. Each of Chen’s 14 long-shots is essentially a candid tableaux, wherein almost nobody notices, let alone interacts with the art in the background.

A quote, usually from the artist (often quite telling), introduces every scene. For instance, Feng Jian makes it crystal clear who really calls China’s artistic shots when he explains how the government “asked” him to replace the PCR testing in his “Covid-Zero” themed mural Fighting the Pandemic with vaccine jabbing.

Most of the artists hardly sound wealthy. For instance, Da Su states: “rent has gone up again, so I have to paint.” Yet, his painting Imagery (one of the nicest seen in the film) hangs in the showroom apartment of a luxury skyrise. Indeed, the CCP’s crony capitalism strikes again according to the unnamed source who wrote: “The income of Dafen painters can now differ by several times of ten, and sadly half of them have been eliminated, like the painter of this piece,” referring to the anonymous painting Peach Blossom Land.

This Woman: Filmed in China, Produced in Malaysia, Only Released in the USA

As the central subject, or rather cast-member, Hihi Lee intends to tell her husband, all the scenes she filmed phoning her lovers, were actually made with a very gay friend. Whether he believes her or not, may depend on whether he keeps watching once the closing credits start, or if he misses her Marvel-like postscript. Regardless, her daughter might need therapy as teen when she hears some her mother’s comments regarding her unmotherly feelings. Fortunately for Lee, the docu-hybrid film she stars in has not been approved for release in China and it probably never will be under the current regime. Regardless, mother and marriage are not exactly sacred to Lee in Alan Zhang’s This Woman, which opens this Friday in New York, at the Metrograph.

Lee, adopting the “persona” of Beibei, makes no secret she essentially caved to pressure exerted by her mother and society, when she agreed to marry and have a child at age when she was not mature enough to handle either. Frankly, she often sounds like she has only now matured to the point where she recognizes her previous immaturity. She is still not great with commitment and fidelity—or maybe that is just her “character.”

In her mid-credits “stinger,” Lee is very nonchalant when asked how she thinks her husband might take the film. Most viewers will wonder more about her daughter, when she hears “Beibei” tell the camera she does not miss her daughter when she is away and only feels guilt regarding her long absences when she sees happy mothers caring for their children. Savvier viewers may wonder if Lee assumes this will never be seen in China, so she can freely confess/perform without fear of personal, familial repercussions.

The Simpsons: The HK Censored Episode, Goo Goo Gai Pan

If an episode of South Park that satirizes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was conspicuously excluded from an American streamer’s Hong Kong site, Trey Parker and Matt Stone would skewer them for it. However, Disney+ did exactly that when it censored the episode of The Simpsons wherein Homer Simpson visited Beijing for its HK customers. According to google, there has been no response from Matt Groening yet. If you live in Hong Kong, you can’t watch “Goo Goo Gai Pan” (S16 E12), but the rest of us still can, for now.

Homer has an awkward relationship with his sister-in-law Selma Bouvier, but when she enters menopause, he agrees to pretend to be her husband, to facilitate her Chinese adoption. Naturally, their romantic chemistry is a bit dubious, attracting the suspicions of Madame Wu, the chief adoption bureaucrat (played by Lucy Liu).

This being The Simpsons, there are plenty of slams on America (mostly easy groaners). However, writer Dana Gould also aimed a number of clever barbs at the CCP. The one most likely to offend the CCP would be the briefly seen Tiananmen Square Monument reading: “on this site, in 1989, nothing happened.” So, Disney+ is literally self-censoring a joke about the Communist Party censoring history. How sad is that? Especially since it shortly preceded the removal of Tiananmen Square memorials across Hong Kong, including the notorious dismantling of the Pillar of Shame statue at the University of Hong Kong.

Beijing Spring: Documenting the Thaw After the Cultural Revolution

For Chinese artists, things could only get better when the Cultural Revolution ended—and they did—to an extent—for a while. During the thaw of the early Deng years, a group of artists emerged that pushed for liberalization in the artistic sphere and more democratic governance. Many of them are now living abroad (for obvious reasons). Andy Cohen and Gaylen Ross chronicle the “Stars Art Group and the related samizdat magazines that revolved around Beijing’s short-lived “Democracy Wall” in Beijing Spring, which opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

The “Stars” group intended their name to be modest, signifying them as small points of light, rather than super-stars in the Western sense. Although many members directly challenged Party censorship, many largely non-political artists were attracted to the Group, simply because they wanted to create without the CCP’s interference, including nude studies, which were banned under Mao.

Eventually, the Group mounted an underground exhibition on the gates of the National Arts Museum. When the government dismantled and confiscated their works, the artists staged the first Tiananmen Square demonstration. That would be the one truly nobody has heard, yet it ended much more peacefully. For a while, the Stars Group was even allowed to exhibit legally, until the Party got a good hard look at some of their work. Wang Keping’s carving “Silence,” in which the knot of his wood serves as a gag for its contorted face, was a particularly notable offender.

Beijing Spring is an absolutely terrific film because it both reports critically important historical incidents and showcases some remarkably striking art. Indeed, it is visually much more interesting than 99% of well-meaning docs that secure theatrical distribution. For those wondering, Ai Weiwei was a late joiner to the group, but he is only briefly seen in Cohen & Gaylen’s film, probably because he and they did not want him to overshadow the other artists, who are lesser known internationally, but played greater roles in the Group’s development.

When watching the film, it is striking just how much more rigid and totalitarian the PRC has become under Xi-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Deng was keenly interested in what the Western press wrote and they in turn had greater access to average man-in-the-street opinion. Yet, inevitably, the arts documentary evolves into a thriller, when the surviving artists explain their clandestine efforts to save Democracy Wall activist Wei Jingsheng, who was on-trial for his writings and facing potential execution.

Moving the Mountain: Documenting the Tiananmen Square Massacre

Today, the CCP celebrates one hundred years of censorship, religious repression, mass murder, and genocide. It is a grim anniversary. June 4^th was also always a day for sad memorials in Hong Kong, but this year, the CCP-controlled government completely banned the annual commemorations of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The world remembers anyway. We should also remember the great filmmaker Michael Apted (best-known for the 7-Up documentary series, the Oscar-winning Coal Miner’s Daughter, and the Bond film, The World is Not Enough), who passed away earlier this year. Unlike his peers who sold-out to the CCP’s influence, Apted documented the Massacre and its aftermath in Moving the Mountain, which is not on any streaming service (funny that), but it is “findable” online.

In 1994, the Massacre was still vividly raw in the memories of the student leaders who survived. Li Lu serves as Apted’s focal figure, because his life so perfectly encapsulates Chinese history. He was born one month before the start of the Cultural Revolution that eventually rendered him an orphan. He was then the only member of his adopted family to survive the Tangshan Earthquake, enduring the government’s notoriously indifferent and incompetent response. Perhaps understandably, he took inspiration from dissident Wei Jingsheng, who was imprisoned by Deng’s supposedly liberalized regime.

Apted largely chronicles the events from Li’s perspective, but he also incorporates the testimony of his surviving colleagues, Wang Chaohua, Wu’er Kaixi, and Chai Ling. At the time, Moving was mildly controversial for its short dramatizations (mainly from Li’s childhood and his escape from Mainland China as part of Operation Yellowbird), but these passages look pretty conventional today.

Perhaps what Moving does better than other films chronicling Tiananmen is the way Apted fully contextualizes the Massacre in China’s historical timeline. He and Li show how the tragedy of June 4^th was shaped by the Cultural Revolution and the short-lived Democracy Wall under Deng. Conceived as an equivalent of Khrushchev’s De-Stalinization campaign, Deng quickly cracked down on the Democracy Wall when Wei and other activists posted more than mere cosmetic criticism of the government. Apted and the former student leaders he interviewed also convey a vivid sense of the reign of terror that followed the Massacre. In fact, they speculate more students were probably killed during the round-up.

Tribeca ’21: Ascension

How can you compete with a factory that pays hourly wages of $2.36? At least they are not using slave labor, as in Xinjiang. Still, anyone doing business with companies like Foxconn and Huawei are definitely benefiting from sweatshop-like conditions. In China, socialism found its perfect mate in oligarchical crony-capitalism. Both rely on a highly state-regulated economy. The result is a dramatically-stratified class system. Jessica Kingdon observes the inequality and conspicuous consummation without commentary in Ascension, which screens as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

True to its title, Ascension ascends its way through contemporary Chinese class structures (something Mao claimed to be doing away with while killing millions of Chinese citizens during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution), starting with the exploited migrant workers. Companies like Huawei employ carnival barker-style recruiters, promising wages in the $2.00-range and maybe even the possibility of a sit-down job. However, the work is monotonous and payment of wages is dependent on the goodwill of capricious supervisors. Greasing palms is necessary even on the factory floor. Plus, the employees of a surreal sex doll factory complain the chemicals they use burn their skin.

The first part of Ascension is by far the most instructive. The middle section documents middle class striving, including some rather pointed scenes from various service training-academies that supply the de-humanized butlers and bodyguards to serve the new class of elites. However, the time devoted to Taobao’s product-hawking live-streamers is rather redundant for anyone who has seen Hao Wu’s People’s Republic of Desire.

The “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” third act is by far the most problematic, especially when a Fuerdai dinner party talks off-handedly about making business trips to Xinjiang, where the CCP has orchestrated a genocidal campaign against the Muslim Uyghurs and Kazakhs. This is an instance where a little context and maybe even some challenging questions from the filmmaker would be helpful. Honestly, the film cannot just drop that reference and then ignore it.

Lost Course: How to Undermine a Revolution

When the people of Wukan in southeast Guangdong threw out their corrupt village council and elected a slate of democratic reformers, outsiders hoped it was the start of something big. Governing is indeed always a trickier proposition than protesting, but the Party and its rigged system did its best to really hamstring the incoming councilors, who were also plagued by their own naivete, vanity, and ambition. Jill Li documents the entire tragedy as it unfolded in Lost Course, which opens virtually this Friday.

Wukan citizens were so incensed when the anonymous “Patriot #1” exposed the entrenched local Communist Party council had sold fertile farm land held by village as a public trust to real estate developers to line their own pockets, they took to the streets. However, they surprised everyone when they stayed there, demonstrating day after day. Their anger only grew after protest leader Xue Jinbo died under “mysterious circumstances,” while in police custody. Eventually, the Guangdong Party authorities intervened, agreeing mistakes had been made and ostensibly granting Wukan greater latitude to reform their own local governance.

Li captures the initial exhilaration of Wukan’s first round real free-and-fair elections, but there is also a nagging sense of foreboding when a key protest leader who initially only seeks a seat on the temporary committee that would oversee the council election, opts at the last minute to run for council office instead. Logically, reclaiming the village’s wrongly sold land is everyone’s top priority, but nobody really has a concrete notion of how to do that within the CCP’s legal and political bureaucracy. As a result, they inevitably disappoint the impatient townspeople.

Watching Lost Course is sort of like water torture (that is not meant in the critical way it might sound like), because we see drip-by-drip how the Wukan democratic coalition fractures, gets distracted, loses confidence, and eventually turns on each other. Not surprisingly, they had help losing their way. In fact, it seems suspiciously plausible several protestors-turned-local politicians were set up on the corruption charges, which they admittedly blundered into.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned for reformist protest movements in Lost Course. You can definitely see parallels between the “9/21 Incident” veterans and Yanukovych’s disappointing post-Orange Revolution Ukrainian government. However, Li’s doc still presents a damning look at the corrosive influence of the CCP on Chinese civil society. In fact, some of the final scenes of the documentary are those of riot police rampaging down Wukan streets yet again in 2016, after arresting dozens of “usual suspects” in the middle of the night.

Sundance ’21: In the Same Breath

Censorship kills—and not just those in the censored country. If you ever doubted it, Xi and the CCP have proved it for over a year. Intrepid documentarian Nanfu Wang exposes how early reports of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan were covered-up, as well as the Communist Party’s propaganda spin efforts once the pandemic became too large to conceal in In the Same Breath. Her timely documentary premiered last night during the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, which was forced to pivot to online this year precisely because of the events and decisions she documents.

When Wang visited China in early January, 2020, she did not think very much at the time about cursory state media reports claiming eight doctors who were arrested in Wuhan for spreading false rumors of a SARS-like virus, but she returns to that moment over and over in Breath. However, when she started seeing an alarming volume of social media reports of a highly contagious and debilitating flu, she realized there was more to the story than the government was letting on.

Wang’s team archived as much of the social media posts as they could before the government deleted them and reached out to the posters. Eventually, she hired a local crew in Wuhan to record conditions in the hospitals and help her conduct remote interviews. She draws out grieving family members and shines a light on the harassment of whistleblowers, like journalist-lawyer Chen Qiushi, who has been conveniently missing since early February 2020.

What emerges is a far more complete and disturbing picture than what viewers saw in Hao Wu’s 76 Days. We have respect for his past work, but Wu’s film rather awkwardly shares a lot of similarities with the characteristics of the state media’s heroic Covid first-responders TV documentaries, as described by Wang.

The way Breath explains the relationship between censorship and propaganda is especially valuable. Merely suppressing embarrassing information is not enough for a regime like the CCP. They also need to create a favorable alternate narrative. In memorably telling sequences, Wang and co-editor Michael Shade shows dozens of Mainland “news” broadcasts repeating the same script, word-for-word verbatim. The effect is both absurd and chilling.

DOC NYC ’20: Smog Town

Anyone skeptical of Biden advisors’ plan for a two-track relationship with China, one pushing back against human rights abuses, while the other seeks cooperation on climate change, should consider themselves largely vindicated by this documentary. The film quietly observes the work of the local regulatory authorities in Langfang, China’s smoggiest, most polluted city. It turns out environmental protection is a dirty business in HAN Meng’s Smog Town, which screens as part of the 2020 online edition of DOC NYC.

Although we are not trained in environmental science, we would guess the colossal industrial behemoths Han periodically shows belching emissions into the air could be a good place to cut Langfang’s air particulates. Instead, the local regulators raid a neighborhood garage that specializes in spray-painting cars. It is a highly telling incident, especially when the proprietor shows up at their offices, hoping he can save his business with the right permits, only to be bounced up and down the hall, in a truly Kafkaesque exercise in bureaucratic absurdity.

Supposedly, China’s big cities are under strict orders to clean up their act. In Langfang, Li Chunyuan (“Uncle Smog Buster”) is in charge of implementing the get-tough policies. He talks green in his public appearances and preachy books, but in meetings, he and his staff only care about their relative standing in the Party’s spreadsheets. They frequently raid poor neighborhoods cracking down on coal stoves, even though one inspector casually admits he uses one himself. The entire third act is dedicated to their emergency efforts to lift themselves from the bottom of the list, but it is all short-term gimmicks, like road blocks banning outside automobiles and nothing will really address systemic problems.

Remember what you see in Smog Town next time you hear Xi or Mike Bloomberg touting China’s environmental progress. Yet, the doc is even more damning as an expose of how government regulators operate and the callous disregard they have for small businesses and mom & pop proprietorship. We see Li’s inspectors putting such establishments out of business, but it clearly does not help the quality of life in Langfang.

Back to School: I Was There—Kate Adie on Tiananmen Square

BBC reporter Kate Adie filed eye-witness reports of the Tiananmen Square Massacre directly from the scene, but she won’t be returning anytime soon, because the CCP has banned her from re-entering the country. You would be correct to take that as a testimonial to the accuracy and integrity of her reports. Decades later Adie remains justifiably proud of her reporting. Now retired from the Beeb, Adie returned to the network to look back at the fateful events of 1989, adding personal and historical context in I Was There: Kate Adie on Tiananmen Square, directed and edited by Andy Webb, which would be a suitable video supplement to your pandemic-home-schooling lesson plans.

Hope was in the air during the year of 1989, unless you were a hardline Communist apparatchik. Gorbachev’s Glasnost reforms had spun out of his control. Ordinary citizens of Eastern Europe were demanding (and taking) greater freedoms. The same seemed poised to happen in China, but Deng and the CCP were more determined to maintain their hold on power and much less concerned with world opinion. Tragically, this became much more obvious in retrospect.

For a step-by-step chronicle of the demonstrations and subsequent brutal crackdown on Tiananmen Square, the definitive Tiananmen: The People vs. the Party is probably your best option. However, I Was There provides a good hour-long overview (the perfect length if you need to play a video for while you take a meeting). Adie also adds the perspective of a journalist who had to work around CCP censorship. Frankly, the mass killings at Tiananmen Square might be considered the stuff of rumor had Adie’s colleague not been able to successfully smuggle her footage out of China (they made five copies, four of which were intercepted at customs).

In fact, I Was There is better than most Tiananmen Square documentaries at covering the wider scope of the pro-democracy protests outside Beijing. Shortly after the massacre, Adie traveled to Xian in Shaanxi Province, where she found lingering physical signs similar protests had met a similarly violent fate, but people were only willing to talk about it in whispers, off camera.

Back to School: Tell the World

How do you explain to your kids a family decision to boycott Disney’s Mulan? You could show them Frontline: China Undercover or this horrifying report from Australian ABC’s Four Corners. According to both sources, Beijing’s network of work camps and detention centers throughout Xinjiang (or East Turkestan) represents the largest systemic incarceration of a religious group since the Holocaust. Shockingly, it has now been revealed Mulan director Nikki Caro filmed extensively throughout the oppressed region. If you want to understand the extent and severity of Beijing’s campaign against Muslim Turkic minorities, watch Tell the World, directed and hosted by Sophie McNeill, which is available on Prime.

Tell the World is logically somewhat more Australian-centric than the Frontline report, because the country is home to a relatively large exiled Uyghur community and several Australian universities have collaborated on facial recognition software that racially profiles and tracks Turkic minorities (viewers are advised to watch Red Flags for more on that story). Sadly, nearly every ethnic Uyghur family is a broken home, because nearly every one of them has a family member who has disappeared or is being held incommunicado in a prison camp.

For all practical purposes, every Uyghur is a prisoner, in one way or another. According to MacNeill: “A UN panel says ‘the region resembles a massive internment camp.’” Beyond those who are confined in outright concentration camps (euphemistically called “re-education camps”), there are those working as involuntary laborers in factories and work camps. The children of these prisoners are consigned to orphanages, where they are brainwashed to reject their cultural and religious heritage. That is cultural genocide, plain and simple.

McNeill talks to several Uyghur Australians, whose stories are utterly devastating. However, the program is not simply anecdotal in nature. She also talks to researchers like Adrian Zenz, who has uncovered the vast scale of the oppression in Xinjiang by sleuthing through publicly available CCP government documents. He has found construction bids incorporating watchtowers, surveillance cameras, barbed wire, and containment walls. He also discovered purchases orders for bulk shipments of cattle prods. In addition, McNeill’s experts use satellite photography to document the systematic destruction of mosques.

This is some excellent reporting. Based on Tell the World and Red Flags, it seems safe to say Four Corners puts American network news magazines to shame. It is hard to image Caro and her cast and crew didn’t observe all the barbed wire around their shooting locations. The absence of mosques in a traditionally Muslim region should have also aroused their suspicions. However, there is no way they could have missed the apartheid-like system that forces Turkic minorities to endure regular sidewalk checkpoints, while Han Chinese are allowed freedom of movement.

Frontline: China Undercover

Frontline calls the cultural genocide currently underway in East Turkestan “the largest mass incarceration of an ethnic group since the Holocaust.” The severity and pervasiveness of the CCP’s campaign against the Muslim Uyghurs they proceed to document justifies such a chilling statement. The world has no shortage of crises right now (again, thanks to the CCP), but the Chinese Communist government’s systematic human rights abuses demand the public’s attention and outrage. Therefore, PBS and Frontline deserve credit for producing and airing China Undercover, filmed, directed, and co-produced by Robin Barnwell, which is now available on the Frontline website and the PBS app.

Access to East Turkestan is tightly controlled by the Party, especially for foreigners and independent journalists. However, Barnwell and his colleagues were able to recruit an ethnic Han Chinese businessman living in Southeast Asia to be their secret eyes and ears in the locked-down region. Thanks to his Han heritage, the man they dub “Li” had much greater freedom of movement than native Uyghur citizens. Indeed, we see him cruise through security checkpoints that stop and invasively search Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs (who have it just as badly in East Turkestan).

Probably two million Muslims are imprisoned in re-education camps, judging from satellite photos of the massive detention centers. Also judging from satellite intel, it appears numerous mosques have been razed into rubble. However, it is hard for Uyghurs and Kazakhs to speak openly, because of the CCP’s Orwellian surveillance apparatus. It is so finely tuned, residents must speak in code over phone lines, because certain words and phrases will automatically alert the authorities. If someone is sent to the camps, they are said to be “studying” instead.