China: Reshooting History in 'Founding of a Republic'
It's early 1949, China's in the endgame of its civil war and Mao Zedong's communist forces are poised to take Beijing. Just south of the Yangtze, in Nanjing, Mao's archfoe, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, holds court as the leader of the Republic of China and its Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) government. But Mao believes that winning Beijing first will deal a mortal blow to the morale of the KMT. En route to what will be the future People's Republic's capital, he and his top lieutenants pause in a town that has been deserted by shopkeepers and merchants fleeing the revolution of the proletariat. As Mao laments being unable to buy even his favorite smokes, he soberly says to his comrades-in-arms, "We need the capitalists back."
It seems improbable that Mao would actually have expressed such a revolutionary sentiment at such a heady time. His was a movement driven by the cause of the exploited worker and peasant. Yet the scene appears in The Founding of a Republic, a slickly produced (though ponderously paced) state-backed film to commemorate this year's 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.
The docudrama-style film begins in 1945 with the then temporarily allied communists and Nationalists celebrating the defeat of the Japanese and culminates with the declaration of the People's Republic by Mao at Beijing's Tiananmen Square. It purports to tell the true and full story of the tangled dance between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT to forge a new, unified China. As you'd expect, many - but surprisingly not all - elements of the KMT are portrayed as malevolent and capricious, and the CCP justly triumphs (of course!). Yet Founding goes beyond routine propaganda. What's striking is how the film exposes - intentionally, we would assume - some of the thinking of the Chinese leadership today
China's past 60 years can be divided into roughly two halves. First came the period of ceaseless revolution, with all the widespread turmoil and suffering it perpetrated. Then the time of gradual reform, which has brought greater prosperity and freedom than China has ever known but which is still characterized by grave corruption and terrible injustice under a stern authoritarianism. Today China is many things, often contradictory: rich and poor, open and closed, liberated and oppressed, confident and insecure. But it decidedly isn't Marxist - or even Maoist...
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It seems improbable that Mao would actually have expressed such a revolutionary sentiment at such a heady time. His was a movement driven by the cause of the exploited worker and peasant. Yet the scene appears in The Founding of a Republic, a slickly produced (though ponderously paced) state-backed film to commemorate this year's 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.
The docudrama-style film begins in 1945 with the then temporarily allied communists and Nationalists celebrating the defeat of the Japanese and culminates with the declaration of the People's Republic by Mao at Beijing's Tiananmen Square. It purports to tell the true and full story of the tangled dance between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT to forge a new, unified China. As you'd expect, many - but surprisingly not all - elements of the KMT are portrayed as malevolent and capricious, and the CCP justly triumphs (of course!). Yet Founding goes beyond routine propaganda. What's striking is how the film exposes - intentionally, we would assume - some of the thinking of the Chinese leadership today
China's past 60 years can be divided into roughly two halves. First came the period of ceaseless revolution, with all the widespread turmoil and suffering it perpetrated. Then the time of gradual reform, which has brought greater prosperity and freedom than China has ever known but which is still characterized by grave corruption and terrible injustice under a stern authoritarianism. Today China is many things, often contradictory: rich and poor, open and closed, liberated and oppressed, confident and insecure. But it decidedly isn't Marxist - or even Maoist...