"China" - BBC Two's new 4-part documentary

I often wish that some programmes would discuss things in greater detail, but if they did I have a feeling the licence fee would be cut, resulting in no such things at all.

It wasn't just that he hadn't seen the programme, it was that Red made a completely incomprehensible post that I didn't begin to see the point of.

Well there we go - part 4/4. A fair view of "justice" and "freedom" in China. I really like Professor Wang - hope he doesn't get "shut up" some day for saying the wrong things. Completely honest and The AIDS activist was also interesting - very passionate and with a fierce sense of justice to be sure.

I must admit I was rather disturbed by the idea that you can effectively be sentenced to 4 years in jail ("re-education through work") without even going to court. And it wasn't very pleasant seeing a group of women being made to sing a song about how wonderful the Party was as part of that process.

As ever it was funny watching officials dodge questions or reply with answers that were obviously rather questionable. One even talked about "propaganda".

I remember seeing the news to the run up to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong, a man and his brother were part of a group of school children during if I recall was in the 1960s where they were arrested by the British for protesting that the truth be taught in school about how Hong Kong was aquired and the Opiums Wars and not the British version. Some of them were imprisoned for two years. I don't believe they were ever given a trial. It's not really hard to believe since the same tactics were used to silence people in Northern Ireland.

wait, is a Brit talking about human rights abuses? Wow.

Now let's not get too provacative, shall we?
Question, not emotion.

A government does itself good by its effectiveness in moving the country forward, which at this stage of development for China should include increasing empowerment of its citizens. It will be interesting to see if China will join the ranks of top tier nations in this regard or whether it will become more like two-bit second tier countries, no offense to anyone.

eecsmaster said:

wait, is a Brit talking about human rights abuses? Wow.

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Yes, because I haven't committed any myself. It's not surprising that as usual apologists are trying to deflect from the main issue by finger pointing.

Mace mistakes have been made in Northern Ireland and HK, but things are a lot better in the former now. In Northern Ireland the people there can vote for their future, even if they parties somewhat hostile to London. And most HKers are quite positive about British rule today. Whereas in China you can't elect who you want and HK today is not so trusting of the central government. So don't pretend the UK is as bad as China - as if that would stop me from commenting anyway.

So, come on, guys, please talk about what's happening in China (or, SHOCK-HORROR, the TV programme itself), given that's what this is about.

deflect from the main points? The issue here is that your points aren't even valid in the given context. My advise to you is to stay clear of your political convictions in a military forum.

Overall, I am still disappointed by the series. Not that the four programmes were not good or interesting in themselves, but because I think they failed to produce their publicaly stated intention, of providing a concise and balanced view of life in China today.

I earlier used an theoretical example of billing a programme about the UK and spending most of the time in the Shetland Islands or Snowdonia. I think I can provide a better example: Billing a programme about Europe and spending 75% of the time in the Former Yugoslavia, Scicily and Eastern Poland. All the programmes would be factually correct, highlight the historic and current problems of those areas, but leave the European novice, no wiser as to the experience of everyday life for the majority on the continent. Which has been my complaint about the series all along.

You just cannot shake the feeling that if China had 1,299,000,000 happy citizens, that the BBC would interview the one exception.

Overall an unbalanced view and one tending to far towards sensationalism for my taste. The series needed to far more balanced, or these four episodes just a small part of a much longer series.

SampanViking said:

You just cannot shake the feeling that if China had 1,299,000,000 happy citizens, that the BBC would interview the one exception.

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I have the feeling that some people here will never accept that a "significant enough" proportion of the Chinese population are unhappy.

Overall an unbalanced view and one tending to far towards sensationalism for my taste. The series needed to far more balanced, or these four episodes just a small part of a much longer series.

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I disagree. It was quite a well-balanced view of China's challenges in my opinion. If you want to see a fluffy view of China, go watch CCTV.

The BBC series was in the style of documentaries you see in the UK all the time. Panorama doesn't devote 50% of the time talking to people who say "everything's ok". Indeed a lot of people get asked far tougher questions than the officials on this show did. They actually got let off lightly, because their responses were never questioned. If a government rep said something like that on a UK show, they'd be ridiculed on tape.

The show could have easily gone all one way and shown all the bad things. As it was it did give a fair voice to the official line, even if it was a completely ridiculous one. They were let down by the weakness of their argument in the face of evidence, not because the BBC were "unfair".