“This week we are joined by Prof Sergey Radchenko to discuss the of tumultuous relationship between the two major superpowers of the communist world during the Cold War. The People’s Republic of China and the USSR.
Sergey Radchenko is the Director of Research and Professor of International Relations at the University of Cardiff. He is an expert on Sino-Soviet Relations, atomic diplomacy, and has written books on Mongolian and North Korean History. He has previously served as a Global Fellow and a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre (in Washington D.C.), and as the Zi Jiang Distinguished Professor at East China Normal University (Shanghai)”
I think today, during what looks like the early start of the Cold War 0.2 we tend either to exaggerate Russian-Chinese relations or collusion around the fact that after the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been integrated more and more with the Chinese economy. The increasing dependency of Russia on China, after the SWIFT ban on Russian banks, has also been exaggerated. In the words of Arnaud Dubien, in spite of what governments believe it appears that “Russia Won’t be China’s vassal” (a very good article).
I think that we have to go back to the Cold War relations of the two motors of world communism: the Bolshevik Soviet Union and Mao’s China. Relations have been always changing and evolving over time – and altough friendship was always more important than enmity, one should say that from the very beginning (not covered in this podcast) there was room for a lot of misunderstandings, low points, high expectations, and a slow syncing (compounded by the all-out attack of Japan and Western imperial powers that had every interest in subverting and blocking communications and avoiding a united anti-Imperial front).
Even if letters and Telegraphs were under surveillance by the Japanese, British, Dutch, and French secret services, the two revolutionary powers of Sun Yat-sen’s Republican China and Lenin’s Soviet Union reached out to try and find a common ground in common anti-imperialist and later on anti-capitalist struggle. Some of the conflicts also arose around wordings and perceived counter-revolutionary actions (such as the invasion of Prague by Warsaw pact troops or Budapest 1956 by Soviet troops). Other arose of older wordings and perceived arrogance – such as using terms such as “infantile” or “backward” that seemed to pop up rather indiscriminately at the most inopportune moments (and that seemed to be lifted out of an imperialist and racialist vocabulary).
Advocating for a united front with the Nationalist Kuomintang (that turned out to be a major mistake), was also encouraged by the Soviets. If you want to find out more about documents that traced the evolution of the Comintern and what was to become the Third World (or the Global South today) you have to look beyond this podcast. The invasion of Prague by the Warsaw Pact country was another blow to the Sino-Soviet relations and also the way the Soviet Union seemed to retreat from the world revolutionary stage, while China seemed to ascend to that position. Also, there was a war Sino-Soviet border conflict in 1969 that tends to be forgotten nowadays.
Very early on the young Soviet power started taking the colonial question seriously (but only as a secondary priority in the fight against the Western industrial imperialist powers) – V I Lenin’s Draft Theses on National and Colonial Questions (written in 1920 on the Second Congress of the Communist International) is an important document in that sense.
I recommend watching the Chinese original first. It has EN subs, it takes a bit to adapt to the pace, designs, and acting styles, jokes, etc. but I guarantee it will be a blast. It was produced by CCTV, Tencent Video, Three-Body Universe, Migu Video, and Linghe Culture and represents a primer in Chinese TV productions. It is fast-paced and edgy, reminding us how similar and cinematic are manhua‘s (or manga/manhwa) and how easy it is to use it as a movie storyboard.
I am tying not to be a purist or a cultural essentialist, od making the case for China’s exceptionalism but let us pause the Netflix inevitability in order to enjoy the original. Yes, it’s spectacular & entertaining, but I think that the UK or Netflix adaptation should be viewed critically on 3 accounts, considering how previous adaptations were quite shallow in comparison with the non-Western Asian originals (not to mention various Techno-Orientalist trappings)
Taking into account the previous Hollywood adaptations of Asian horror classics – say The Ring, The Grudge, The Eye, that are not only watered-down, Westernized versions of the original, but they all enact a sort of deletion (becoming canonic) instead of the turning more attention to the original material. Accordingly, this appropriation and adaptation is mostly triggered by money- and catering to Western tastes, ignoring its historically materialist setting – as part of the Japanese Miracle and “Confucian Belt” Tiger Economies (Ju-On, Ringu, Gin gwai respectively) propped up but also disciplined by the US. The same I would argue for the Liu Cixin Remembrance of Earth’s Past – the decision of the producers to place it in the UK rather than China speaks volumes. I mention this while agreeing with the fact that internationalizing such productions is essential to growing their core audience, especially for getting Chinese SF more popular abroad. So, while agreeing it is good to decontextualize the Chinese original, I think that the source material should get more visibility.
The original Three-Body (三体) was originally free of charge and available on the YT channel, and it was hailed by some cultural critics as one of the most accurate, adult and canonic SF series ever made. Three-Body (三体) was in complete contrast with the usual (very entertaining but also quite infantilizing) Disney-Lucasfilms SF productions (SW extended universe – think The Mandalorian). Charles Mudede in particular was very vocal in making clear that a Hollywood adaptation would not invest money in a book trilogy that is so complicated, so dark and so complex and stick to it, especially because it “provides a solid introduction to the key ideas of a discipline that went into decline in the US around the mid-1970s, physics.” Well now that series is here, it is time to go for the original.
Again, as mentioned previously on Timespacewarps we should not narrow down the scope of our cultural opening. During the XX century the West celebrated China’s “opening up”, which meant opening up to US/Europ-Atlantic liberalism and its financial institutions (see admission into WTO and Clinton’s China Trade Bill speech), but also buying into democratic values, and eventually becoming the World’s Shopfloor. This is not to say we should encourage Chinese exceptionalism. Yet it’s most banal and easy to mold everything into Anglo – American topoi. Ehy try to expunge differences, divergences, and specificities in order to make more of the same for the home market? It the aim – as was the original aim of its producers and ths crazy story behind it – is to produce a similar IP to the Lucasfilm SW, then go ahead – expand the universe! It’s anyway a very narrow and incestuous media world we’re living in. I say this also in regard to the Hollywood Dream factory record of casting incredibly discriminatory and stiff characters in the roles of Asians, Arabs, or Soviets agents during the Cold War. Do we need more Western versions of Asian movies/series or should we help translate or disseminate existing productions more throughly? What the hell happened to Own Voice.
So here is episode 1 of the original Chinese series with pretty decent EN subtitles. It is very high quality and it has a very good cast. The whole story is woven around an interplay btw history (or historical materialism), the natural sciences, and ideology – a debate inaugurated one might say by the paper of Boris Hessen at the 1931 Second International Congress for the History of Science in London where he delivered “The Socio-Economic Roots of Newton’s PrincipiaMathematica”.
This series is incredibly paced, and it contains some incredible scenes from the Observatory during the Cultural Revolution – it is really a good way to get acquainted with what would be termed the geo-military concept Third Front – of trying to industrialize China’s rugged interior and agricultural regions, in the midst of a double whammy: the fear of that China’s industrial and military infrastructural core would be vulnerable in the event of invasion by the Soviet Union or air raids by the United States (yeah after the Sino-Soviet split things looked very differently). The series is also an exception in the way it depicts a multiracial, multinational planetary governance that is trying to respond to this alien threat.
After the US rapprochement and as national defense considerations waned, the pace of building up the interior according to guiding principles of “Close to mountains, dispersed, hidden” (kaoshan, fensan, yinbi) declined and many plants went bankrupt in the 1980s (of course many got built in a hurry and were as a consequence quite defective). This does not mean some of them got an afterlife as private enterprises.
Anyway, it is important to watch such a series and the first batch of 30 eps (!) – out of consideration for its impact in China itself, where the Netflix adaptation is not streaming. Liu Cixin fans and Three-Body fans applauded the TV series on Douban (Rotten Tomatoes and Letterbox in one), where 449,000 viewers gave the show a high rating of 8.7. Below are some posters made for the anniversary edition -combined SF with traditional, vertical Chinese landscape painting, “shanshui hua” (literally painting of mountains, rivers, and cliffs).
Out of respect for the majority of our (English-speaking) visitors, I tried to avoid posting Romanian language materials or RO posts. This time I am making an exception – here is a recent talk on the Romanian Youtube Channel Dezarticulat666 I was invited to participate in. They also have a Twitch channel if you practice this sport. Dezarticast has a mind-blowing diverse range of topics, generally focusing on media, environmental politics, environmental justice, labor rights, cultural labor, the so-called ‘creative industries’, openly discussing working conditions, unionization, exploitation and political economy. What I consider vital is their post-ironic, mediatic and tech-savvy approach to all of the above – I think today it is counter-productive (even suicidal) to not be able to discuss current politics, militarism, refugee crisis, populism without taking into account sucy media as comics, movies, musical videos or web03, tech solutionism or crypto scams, or radical UFOlogy, algo-empowered haterizm or meme magick.
While the discussions was free floating and provocative, sure to be controversial take on a few hot topics in today’s multipolar world, there’s a lot left out to be covered in future podcasts, with different guests & and their experiences. I feel highly indebted to A. Rautoiu for making the invitation and for editing the final material. Here is some of the things discussed:
Global Times (PRC official positions, foreign policy, analysis, etc) it might seem like opaque if one does not actually read btw the lines, yet again it is one of these rare insider perspectives. It also offers quick short 3m videos with recent news (similar to Scmp). Invaluable as to official party line I would say.
Discourse Power substack (by Tuvia Gering a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, and a Tikvah’s Krauthammer Fellow, specializing in Chinese security and foreign policy, and emergency and disaster management.). It’s about ‘discourse power’ – and how this is becoming a job advertising the capacity to read China’s entrails. I am pretty cautious of such efforts (since there’s always a bidding going on) but i appreciate the translation effort.
I am very happy I managed to see this movie. It has been a quest to find a subtitled copy and serendipity helped. Finally found a platform with new Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Japanese, HK, Indian etc. dramas to watch online. To watch a movie like this today can instantly mark one as a victim of Chinese propaganda or as completely disconnected from the world we live in. Well, think it is quite the other way around – in order to try and understand how connected we are and how we got here or how our world is at least partially the result of these vicissitudes of CCP having steered the worlds most populous country trough troubled waters. Watching 1921 from where one stands today puts in perspective the Western worlds trouble with China today, so one should give it a try.
There are several ways in which we might categorize bulk responses from a liberal democratic West to Chinese news outlets, CCP official documents, speeches, official spoke persons or historical dramas such as 1921: 1) they are lying 2) they are saying something else 3) they are trying to brainwash me or themselves 4) it is really hard or impossible to understand what they are actually saying 5) i do not care what they are saying since it is all authoritarian junk and propaganda anyway 6) i told you so it is the Yellow Peril. I am trying to steer clear of all of those knee-jerk responses and pitfalls. Essential to this is taking recent Chinese movies such as 1921 at least as seriously or earnestly as the ones who produced, played in them and contributed to them in any form. I think 1921 is important in how it stands within the legacy of “red modernism“, since we just found out that ‘the end of history’ did not happen in 1989. What is the place of socialist realist art or socialist state controlled + privately sponsored art of cinema nowadays and what is its relation with Hollywood Marvel capitalist superhero blockbusters? What about the older discussions about how and if the historical avant-garde’s art education ideals clashed or survived and coexisted (got repackaged?) within more poppy expressions or it they just got in line with what was (later) conceived as subservient propagandistic socialist-realist artistic expressions (an important counter-example constitutes the late oeuvre of Hungarian-Romanian artist Matthis Teutsch uncovered by artist/researcher Miklos Szilard)?
It is clear that nobody, at our particular historical juncture, in the 20s of 21st century is able to produce a movie like this or approach this particular history of communism or Comintern with something amounting to style. I do not think this is a product of propaganda in the usual sense (official parroting stale uninteresting statements). If you insist on the propaganda value of such a movie (beyond it being a mere fun historical drama), why not regard it as a contemporary form of stylish ‘pop-aganda’, that has more to do with K-dramas or J-dramas, C-bands or ‘young adult’ cultural productions?
1921 uses freely both the rich pictorial and iconographic history of Chinese Communist painting, poster and graphic art as well as the current wave of dramas and streaming services. In seeing these aesthetic overlaps or different vibes, I am not trying to diminish in any way the originality or the aim of this vibrant yet heavily controlled production. At the moment of this writing the CCP is not only the oldest, still surviving example of a ‘vanguard party’ in the world that surely has transformed over the years, but also serves as a strong, still-standing example or existing offshoot of that relevant revolutionary period, embodying its dreams, anxieties, constraints, trials, failures and plans that sprung up right after the successful Bolshevik October Revolution. Of course this does not make them founder saints nor wash countless (later) rectification campaigns or excuse Mao’s ‘war against nature‘. This movie is a total oddball in today’s capitalist realist world, but one that is also interested in making this content available in tune with today’s changing taste, keeping it real & intriguing, emotional and sexy enough to watch for 2 whole h. When there is so much clamor about strawmen like Cultural Marxism or the whole paranoia about the PC, it would be good to actually forget all that for a second and watch 1921.
A few observations (please forgive me for not going into detail or getting stuck in debates about historical or ideological arguments and finer points):
-this struggle for founding the Chinese Communist party (like other various parties across Asia) is the culmination of a hide-and-seek with the European (and Japanese) Imperial powers. This is only the result of a long Asian (in this case Chinese) anti-Imperialis struggle that was already globalized, reaching from the heart of Empires (London, Paris) to Shanghai, Penang and Singapore. Asian revolutionaries dotted the urban centers as exiles, and they actively plotted and tried to subvert and leverage the overwhelming advantages of the West like in Tim Harper’s excellent book – using shadowy networks, printing presses (see below) and false identities to be able to stay one step ahead and avoid being crushed under the Imperial boot
-the movie is not just about the CCP youthful rise or the many (hard to keep track of) historical figures and contributors to its cause, but the Chinese people’s continuous struggle for national self-determination, against a backdrop of foreign power’s aggression and multiple competing interests that kept China under-developed, divided and in the grip of warlordism, basically a semi-colonial region in a permanent dependency limbo (important to understand that the later recognition of China as a state and the diplomatic taw – is linked with the US/West’s support of China’s only after the Sino-Soviet Split)
-remarkable is the “Internationale” song that is hummed and reappears, a sort of internationalist leitmotiv background that puts the whole small, incipient party 1st congress in a larger, global or historical context (that is unavoidably & always connected to larger struggles or aims)
-in its initial stages the CCP functions mostly on a pattern established by the patriotic ‘secret society’ model with the difference that it didn’t have the clout or influence or resources to match and somehow (because of its ideological support for worker strikes & unions) found itself in direct conflict with both foreign interests in China + ‘Green Gang’ crime syndicate type of secret society that was well connected with the police & KMT officials. Of course there was also another important element –Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement– a series of travel and work programs were organized between 1912 and 1927 largely by a group of Chinese anarchists who had come to Paris and wanted to introduce French science and social idealism to China (among the beneficiaries of such programs where Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai)
-the movie presents what AN Whitehead would likely call ‘an adventure of ideas (even if after reading his Aims of Education essays I am not sure he appreciated revolutionary thoughts themselves, though in practice he supported everything new, interesting and ‘kicking), in this case, the evolution of Marxist (or Marxist-Leninist), particularly after the May Fourth Movement ideas (one of the movie’s examples being classroom ‘class struggle’ lessons) outside of their actual place of initial elaboration (Western Europe), diffusion and further elaboration under different socio-historical circumstances
-remarkable is also the fragment when the foundation of the party sounds like establishing a successful ‘firm’ – yeah you heard me right, and this is not cynical, it’s also this business (?!) acumen in view of future profitable investment returns, and this has something peculiarly SF (not in the usual sense of superlative tech but in the sense of counter intuitive, not according to immediate facts), something quite speculative in it (that more or less led to today’s quantum entanglement space-based communication & Moon exploration program?!), the CCP being at that time mostly a ‘pipe dream dreamed up by a bunch of certainly at the time – pretty powerless youthful minority group – with a strong feeling that history was on their side
-1921 is mainly a history happening inside big urban centers (Beijing and Shanghai), inside reading groups or study groups, foreign language schools, of modernizing translation efforts and printing presses, a history that plays on largely inside (under the noses of) the French Concession in Shanghai and largely underground, small scale and always at risk at being found out, stopped in its tracks and quickly disbanded/eliminated (important to mention that the peasant question is brought only one time and only by Mao particularly) and you can always feel that it’s largely about young metropolitan Chinese literati
-we see here the very beginning of something in nuce – full of preparative phases and incipient stages, a very early start-up that is not yet steeled up or fully organized (or militarized), not yet having suffered the tremendous losses of the Long March and massacres under Chiang Kai Shek’s White Terror of 1927 , far from ready to win in the Chinese Civil War of 1945-1949 (all this later history is compressed in the last 10 minutes or so of the movie in an B & W explosive, harsh, heroic + dramatic collage that includes the famous 1949 declaration in Tiananmen Square by Mao)
-another interesting effect is its decision to cast boy band members or Chinese rappers celebs in such important historical roles, this brings us back to the whole ‘auratic’ survival aspect of today’s media celebs (discussed by Shaviro elsewhere as in the aura of ‘cinema stars’ in the age of mechanical reproduction cum démocratisation and as a response to W Benjamin’s key text)
-liked the iconic reinterpretation of the Pacific WWII flag photo of the US victory with the red flag instead of the stars & stripes, this might inflame many since a lot of critics try to depict today’s China as just another US, not as an alternative model
-really enjoyed the role of Japan – or let’s say the conflicting role of the Japanese, the freshly modernized Imperial power of the Far East playing this double role, of translating the Communist Manifesto and harboring ‘dangerous’ Chinese emigres, but also with secret police infiltrating and hunting down both its own Japanese citizens and Chinese anarchists (also considering Mao’s stint with anarchist thinking in his 20s) or socialists
-significant is how much political learning, teaching and practicing foreign languages (English, French, Russian) was part of this active transfer of radical ideas and how this was part of a longer modernizing effort that was very much part of China’s young literati intellectuals and students lives at the end of 19th c and early 20th
-really loved the great cameos of young (jokingly and affectionately called ‘small’) Deng (D Xiaoping being arguably the toughest of Mao’s 1st generation revolutionary peers, surviving all purges & perils) in a printing house basement in Paris ready for Bastille Day & spreading pro-Chinese manifestos or the Mao scene when he’s running at night being really pissed off after being kept outside the gates of the asshole french party people. It’s a scene almost emblematic – of RPC quest for international recognition and/or “Beijing Consensus”, craving inclusion while always being shoved around & emboldened to reinvent these organizations & forums that kept China on the outside
-a culture of lively debate was at the center of the establishment of the first Congress, but essentials are already there (dictatorship of the proletariat) – still, a lot of discussions are about how to adapt Marxist ideas or Bolshevic experiences to the local conditions, or what was the actual time scale of transformations or if one had to wait till the proper conditions (a key point) came about, yet this also tells us precious little about the future transformation of a revolutionary party into a ruling party. The movie also brings forth the way the Comintern (especially through the difficult role of Dutch internationalist communist Henk Sneevliet who was basically, according to Tim Harper, on the most important Western Chinese mission since Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci) started linking up the various revolutionary cells around the world
“The film follows the Chinese dream (中国梦) through the social classes, prioritizing productivity and innovation.” (wiki)
According to an opinion piece published on Qiushi (the leading official theoreticaljournal of the Chinese Communist Party), the Chinese Dream is about “Chinese prosperity, collective effort, socialism, and national glory”.
I am going to jot down a few quick thoughts after a fresh viewing of the new immersive documentary made by Jessica Kingdon – as it is one of the best recent documentaries about China. When one sez “China” one should be very skeptical – since the whole topic is now politically and emotionally charged. There are stakes on all sides from a growing quite dangerous sinophobia, discrimination, and racism against people of Asian origin around the world. There are many points of contention and everything feels to add to the previous biases – including accusations of alleged forced ‘sinicization’ of minorities, crackdowns and labor camps for ethnic Uyghur minority in Xinjiang & minority religious groups (especially Moslems), a crackdown on HK (one country two systems), fears over Taiwan, the continuing debate surrounding zoonotic spillover event at the wet market in Wuhan including the Biden’s administration recent military buildup as a response to both Russia & China. One should never make a sandwich out of these separate issues. The most dangerous at the time I think is the old imperial ‘Unipolar Moment’ US-led saber-rattling. Warmongering is hot at the moment, the old frames don’t help and what we are living is not a new Cold War but more of ‘hot peace times’ (as Zizek put it in long-read about the war in Ukraine) where inflammatory rhetoric covers up a much more mundane & business as usual reality. That said, Zizek himself has been a strong critic of what he used to call in an Al-Jazeera interview the (non-)alternative to the English neoliberalism “Chinese-Singaporean capitalism with Asian values”. No matter of you call it that or “State-led capitalism with Confucian Characteristics” (as Chinese themselves sometimes prefer), there is a lot more to be said and I don’t think one can have a monolithic position at this shifting crossroad, especially when China is the only contending world power that still believes in some form of multilateralism & noncynical win-win globalism. In the West, it becomes easier and easier to dismiss or ignore the diversity of the contemporary ideological field in China, including its various currents and countercurrent of orthodox or heterodox economical thought that have shaped and continue to influence its policy issues today.
What is clear is that Chinese media is being too easily labeled nowadays as “state-affiliated” media as if the western media is free of any affiliations or strings attached. In response we should label various western media outlets, Twitter now as Musk-affiliated or Bezos-affiliated (Washington Post) media. I find this a ridiculous hyperbole, an example of shameful double standard, a forgetfulness by Big Tech that is trying to rebrand itself as ‘national asset’ in the New Cold War. Apart from a divergence explained by commercial rivalries, there’s a lack of social media overlap btw Big Tech and local Chinese tech companies and platforms explained by the specifics of China’s ‘Ascension’ since the 1970s libéralisation and gradual opening towards today’s economic modernisation. Chinese innovation is thriving today because of this wise divergence in policy – they learned to exist and develop because the Big Tech was regulated by the Chinese state giving local startups a chance in the face of the Californian tech behemoths. So this disconnect has been partially useful and intentional +yet we’re living a cultural-linguistic & EuroAmerican – centric disconnect from the Sinosphere (the online world of wechat, Douyin, Weibo, Bilibili and more) – insuring a lot of misunderstandings and the usual faux pas. Purging the US. academia & technoscience as a response to current strategic realignment & divestment is not the answer (without considering the “role of firms from core capitalist countries in industrial relocation to and foreign direct investment in the PRC“). Not that social media can ever clarify anything, even while it vows to filter disinformation – it’s just that one can only see the big bubble of the others, not one’s own… There are many post-digital folklore anthropologists and social media sociologists and documentarists changing all this and I am grateful to them. While at official levels (policy, diplomacy, politics) there is this monologue about US-Chinese decoupling, ‘new cold war’ dangers, economic nationalism, the ground level transitioning away from a unipolar (US-centered) world requires both artistic & documentarian skills – since there are preciously few bridges. Otherwise, we will fail miserably, being blind to how interconnected things are or what kind of East-West dialectics is there afoot.
China is understandably wary of any Western involvement in its internal affairs and has sound historical reasons for that, yet it also tries to diversify its own exterior presentation & identity, while being at the same time busy solving its national (internal) unprecedented problems (slowing economy, aging population, ecological green energy transition, cracking down on tech giants, regulating & curbing the real estate boom + the managing its worst COVID lockdown crisis yet). Whether we understand, empathize or not, 21st c China is in a continuous dialogue with the outside world. China knows what it has to face, no matter what skeptics are saying. It also tries to do something nobody ever tried in the history of humanity, to take seriously all these challenges and not be cynical about it or over-confident. China is not trying to lay low and double down, pretend they’re not there and just let a few reap the benefits of “disruption” or Schumpeterian “creative destruction” (like the 2008 Crisis bailouts have demonstrated again and again).
Ascension – tries to fill this gap in many ways. It shows a diversified, socially ebullient world. It’s full of invisible overwork, myriad supply chains and also of fantastic vistas, and yes a billion dreams, wishes, artificial worlds, constant promotional feeds and the so-called “fan economy” or Wanghong economy of internet fame (like one of the Chinese streamer turned personal brand trainers sez in the docu). Ascension – the title has some religious ring to it – yet this is a very secular bootstrapping effort. It is zooming in on various, very difficult & still evolving aspects (from factory work to leisure, from previous external export orientation to internal markets) without transforming them into nefarious dystopian verdicts or snark remarks. Skills and tutorials seem to pervade this offline to online fluidity – people are constantly speaking into phones, recording DIY ads utilizing a mobile phone & selfie stick, pampering their image, making photo shoots, posting or making product placement, or learning how to promote their personal brand and train themselves into possible jobs and life choices while confronted with immense pressures to be materially successful and be a ‘super boss’ (garner fans) not just a boss (a boss without fans). One can see a much more accelerated version of Western neoliberalism, yet one can also see more experimentation – vernacular digitalisation, tryout of everything available. The movie does not comment or deconstruct. It does not ignore the whole breath of experiences and it also does not try to be exhaustive (how could it be in a billion people strong country?). Everything is spaced out, has a unreal feeling and this whole ecosystem of online Chinese celebs – influencers, gamers and consumer culture leadership seminars might be repulsive or feel oddly hyper-consumerist yet it is only part of the story. It all starts with what is lacking in most accounts of China – its migrant worker population (about 130+ million strong) being called by Foxconn recruiters on buses. These workers are the workers that have been most affected by the current lockdown. Workers doing highly repetitive work in the shop floor of the world, considered extinct (or unacceptable) in the West (old Fordist conveyor belts) while also watching soaps on their phones online.
From amazing (both toxic fume and surreal) scenes inside sex-doll factories to simple plastic bottle’s water filling to thousands of bikes, everything gets some form of coverage. It also records the in between talks of workers & managers, talk about ghosts in factories, fengshui swords, fragments and daily bits of “chit-chat”, people tired, nervous, janitors having small naps during work, getting an electric massage and training to become shock workers or bodyguards or butlers to the new well-off China’s rich. There is an intensity that is hard to convey, and there is a sort of exuberance & non-innocence that seems to go along with ‘working hard & party hard’.
I think it is completely wrong and foolish to focus on China mimesis of the West, this is completely the wrong alley for me. There is something else afoot and this documentary proves it. My deepest impressions are somehow turning around learning (the bad and the good, almost like throwing back in the face of the West its own Western superfluous étiquette or witnessing such a dedication for the basics of Western literacy). The very fact is that the people of China of all classes want internationalism, are becoming increasingly cosmopolitan, and are more than ever wooing the West. Are people in the West doing the same? Are they even putting an ounce of effort or interests to see beyond their ‘big noses’? I don’t think so.
What is important here is that it is not just an individual ordinary effort or state -sponsored or party led one – it is almost a communal effort to enjoy the newfound place on the international world & probe, go crazy with the incredible affordances that it’s hard to match – expanding infrastructure is offering (railroads, trains, IT, AR, online AI assisted tech, face recognition, virtual pay systems, QR core everything) water park arena events (simultaneously) with efforts to get better at everything – to learn everything, from science & tech to good manners to simple basic behaviors as useless (?) as smiling exercises or the ‘Western business étiquette hugging’. Let them hug you and hug them back as softly or strongly as they do!
That said – I would have liked more palpable experience of China’s vast new networks of public transport or its actual Research & Development ‘business parks’, incubators – all the state-private technoscientific capabilities (including its space exploration program) or the biomedical advances. There were snippets of subcultural milieus – yet this was indeed explored elsewhere in some detail(thinking of the amazing Shamate that I still haven’t seen). Also would have liked to see more about internal tourism -even its red tourism.
The #READCHINA team is happy to announce that we now have a designated space for hosting and browsing English translations of Chinese comics on our website! All comics come with a short intro and are viewable for free at: https://t.co/C5vD6ttepipic.twitter.com/4bUPw67xNo
“For most of the 20th century, pocket size comic books (lianhuanhua 连环画, often literally translated as “linked images”) were an integral part of Chinese everyday reading culture, providing readers with entertainment, information and/or political instruction. Established as such throughout the 1920s and 1930s, after 1949 these comic books continued to range from adaptations of literary texts or films to hagiographies of socialist heroes like Lei Feng to stories propagating the usefulness of using fertilizer in agricultural production. Published as handy pocket-sized booklets, they were shared among children and adult readers alike to be read at street stall libraries or at work units after hours. Lianhuanhua production was massive, with an estimated 50.000 titles published since the founding of the PRC. Moreover, one in three books published in 1986 was a comic!”(READCHINA)
6. A little while later, R2 walks out of the secret storeroom and finds another robot, C-3PO (Silipi’ao 思里皮奧). R2 can only speak electronic language (dianziyuyan 電子語言), but C-3PO looks like a person and can speak human languages.
1. In a certain vast galaxy, the entirety of which was ruled by the Galactic Republic (Yinhe Gongheguo 銀河共和國) in the past, but now this Republic has been destroyed and is now ruled by a Galactic Empire (Yinhe Diguo 銀河帝國). Not only does the Galactic Empire use despotic violence to oppress all of the planets in their galaxy, but they also are trying to rule the entire universe.
[6] At the beginning of the movement, she was among the first to join the “rebel factions.”
[4] The girl in charge gave me a scrutinizing look. Suddenly, she turned her head to her classmates: “You do your job, I’ll take him to the main building!” After we had taken two turns, she suddenly spoke to me in a lighter voice: “Teacher Wang, don’t you recognize me? …… I’m Lu Danfeng.” My memory came back.
[5] She had been secretary of the Youth League branch of her class in senior high and was the most active in the whole school in studying Mao’s Selected Works. She was an exemplary student.
[8] I had heard that she and Li Honggang were pretty close. After the start of the movement, they were inseparable. I never expected that they would later join two diametrically opposed factions. Originally, Li Honggang was called Li Qian’gang. But because “Qian” consists of the characters “black” and “today,” he changed it to Li Honggang.
Introduction: This is a science fiction comic book (科学幻想连环画). Through a reporter’s–Little Smarty’s–travel to Future City, [this comic book] vividly unfolds before [our] eyes future high developments in science and technology and the splendid prospect of limitless magnificence in people’s lives. It also tells its young readers: Only if [we] painstakingly study and only if [we] are bold in climbing scientific heights during the advance of the Four Modernizations, can [we] build our motherland to become as thriving and prosperous as Future City.
After dinner, Little Tiger, Little Swallow, and I went for a walk on the street. We slowly walked along the plastic sidewalk. I looked up to the sky and discovered two moons! A round moon, and a sickle-shaped moon, one shining to the east and one to the west.
In the distance, the high rises gleamed in soft pale blue and pink light, and the borders of the sidewalk also gleamed in pale green light. Even Little Swallow’s floral skirt and Little Tiger’s shirt were all resplendent in their bright colors.
TimeSpace Warps 