Code red in China
documentary that just appeared in China opens with a narrator on a stage, wearing a simple white blouse and blue jeans. The former television journalist who produced the film, Chai Jing, describes her anxiety when a daughter was born with an illness that may have been caused by air pollution and that requires surgery. She then delivers a devastating portrait of how China’s pollution has become a major threat to health.
With its simplicity and frightening message, the 104-minute film, Under the Dome, attracted a huge online audience when it was released this month. It was posted on major Chinese websites— including that of the official People’s Daily— and appeared to have the support of some government officials. China’s new environment minister welcomed the release and compared the film to Rachel Carson’s landmark 1962 book, Silent Spring. Hundreds of millions of Chinese viewed the movie in the days after its release.
Then, on March 6, the screen went blank. Chinese propaganda authorities ordered all news outlets and internet services to take down the film and stop reporting on it. One leaked directive from the Shanghai censor insisted that media outlets “must absolutely discontinue coverage” of the film and its creator, “as well as reports, commentaries, interviews, and special topics that concern or extend to this film.”
The movie’s popularity underscores the growing public discomfort at the toll pollution is taking. As the film points out, China’s embrace of capitalism led many people to ignore or excuse dirty air a generation ago.
The release of the film, followed by the censor’s blackout, suggests competing interests are at work in China despite the monopoly on power enjoyed by the Communist Party. Clearly the documentary could not have appeared without some tacit or direct support from official quarters. This often happens in authoritarian systems: a newspaper or filmmaker is allowed to campaign for rectifying some failure, within careful boundaries of not challenging the system itself. Under the Dome upset some special interests, such as polluting companies, but it did not take on China’s closed political system.
Once the film was released and caused a sensation, the apparatus panicked. Censoring it was clumsy, typical of the regime. But the people living under the dome won’t forget what they saw, nor what they see and breathe every day.
OTHERS SAY
A