February 24, 2003

Chinese Omens

Hero, a new film by celebrated Chinese director Zhang Yimou, "has delighted Beijing's mandarins, who are submitting it as China's nominee for best foreign film at the Academy Awards," reported the January 2nd New York Times. "And it has infuriated some Chinese critics, who have panned Mr. Zhang's plot for promoting a philosophy of servitude."

The subject of Zhang's film is the court of Emperor Qin Shihuang, a ruthless monarch whose reign "has been compared to the actions of Napoleon and Stalin, and whose bloody legacy remains a raw wound in today's China." Best known as the builder of China's Great Wall 2,200 years ago, Qin absorbed six warring states into one centralized kingdom by pitilessly exercising total power. His methods included creating a totalitarian police state and summarily executing anyone suspected of disloyalty. "Modern artists approach the subject with caution, in part because Mao Zedong saw the founding emperor as an inspiration and the Communist Party still views the ancient leader as a pointed allegory," noted the Times.

While China's government-controlled film industry is preaching the "virtues" of totalitarian power and civic submission, the regime is preparing to impose a draconian "anti-sedition" law on Hong Kong. "Five years after Hong Kong's handover, China's curtain is closing over our once free society," explained Martin Lee, founding chairman of the island's Democratic Party, in a December 31st Wall Street Journal column. "At Beijing's directive, Hong Kong's government has unveiled controversial new measures on 'treason, subversion, sedition, and secession.' Such vague laws are used in mainland China to convict and imprison everyone from Internet entrepreneurs to journalists and academics."

According to Martin, "any group that falls afoul of Beijing can easily be quashed under Hong Kong's new law. Life was already precarious for democratic politicians, journalists, labor and rights activists among others, and now has become more so." The law also "appears targeted at the Falun Gong [a self-improvement system outlawed by China's Communist rulers] and could well end up stifling other religious groups."

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2003/02-24-2003/insider/vo19no04_china.htm