Word: china
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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...
...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. (See pictures of modern Shanghai...
...cigarette; he and his cohorts admit they are ignorant about economics, which they acknowledge is essential to running the country. The message: Mao was great at consolidating the nation under the communist banner, but he was clueless about development; it's today's CCP that made the new new China - modern, strong, feared...
...chance to usher in democracy. This way, the CCP can be promoted as a party with roots in a broad-based political movement and not just in the spoils of war - thus further boosting its authority. Taiwan figures too. Mao tries to persuade Li Jishen, an influential southern China figure aligned with the KMT, to join the communist government. Li confesses to Mao that he is responsible for the deaths of many communist cadres. Mao's reply: Let's forget the past and begin a new future. That's directed at Taipei - part of Beijing's ongoing charm offensive toward...
...Then there's the Sinophile John Leighton Stuart, son of missionaries to China and U.S. ambassador to Chiang's Nanjing government. At the time, the real-life Mao vilified Stuart as an agent of American aggression toward the communists. In the film, Stuart, as well as the U.S. State Department, is lukewarm toward Chiang and the KMT - reflecting, perhaps, Beijing's desire to maintain the momentum of its improving diplomatic ties with Washington. (Last November, the Chinese acceded to a four-decade-old request by Stuart's family to have his ashes buried in a cemetery in Hangzhou, near Shanghai...