The Chinese Are Coming

[Tommy4ever]

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/chinese-are-coming/

I missed this when it was on TV.

The first of the two episodes is very interesting and gives a good look into Chinese Imperialism in Africa. The 2nd one isn't quite so good and is a bit too anti-China. However, there is a pretty amusing scene where some semi-coherent Americans try to justify why they are protesting against kids being taught Chinese in school. :p

The first episode is definately worth a watch.

[Comrade J]

Learnt everything I want to know about Chinese imperialism at uni, so not sure I will watch this, but thanks for the link, I'm gonna see what other good documentaries they have.

[caramelpence]

This set of documentaries was like much of what Western governments and media organizations produce when it comes to China - it was designed to present the role of China in other countries in as bad a light as possible and in pursuit of that goal it employed a great deal of faux-concern for societies that most people, or at least the kind of people who work for television stations and make popular documentary films, would never care about, were it not for the fact that they can be used as a way of attacking China. Just like Tibet, then. The very title of the series conjures up racist idioms like the "yellow peril". Taken as a whole, the documentaries said much more about the fears and prejudices of the producers than about China itself or about China's impact in other countries, and in that respect it is consistent with the way that Western actors and commentators have historically thought about and presented other non-Western societies, i.e. as a way of expressing concerns about their own societies rather than in order to provide an accurate picture or analysis of another country. You could legitimately compare these documentaries to, say, Montesquieu's Persian Letters, because both have/had the same ideological function. This was particularly clear from the documentaries' sustained focus on the environment, e.g. charcoal production in the Amazonian rainforest, which reflects the depth of anti-development and anti-growth sentiment amongst the hoi polloi of countries like Britain today, and a sense of jealousy in relation to China's economic dynamism versus stagnation in Western Europe.

[Comrade J]

Just had a look around - it has some good documentaries, including one about Anarchism in America.

Also has Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky, the Bill Hicks documentary, one in North Korea and a load of good science documentaries! Well that's my evening sorted then. Sorry, I don't mean to detract from your Chinese imperialist one, just want to say thanks.

[Tommy4ever]

Just had a look around - it has some good documentaries, including one about Anarchism in America.

Also has Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky, the Bill Hicks documentary, one in North Korea and a load of good science documentaries! Well that's my evening sorted then. Sorry, I don't mean to detract from your Chinese imperialist one, just want to say thanks.

There are a couple of really good ones about Venezuela as well. I found this website through some revlefter linking one.

But, unfortunately, in order to find good docs on this site you have to wade through a lot of shite.