Comments:
The History Channel's three-hour series,
China Rising, covers the
period from the Cultural Revolution to the government of Deng
Xiaopeng in a 50-minute segment called
Roads to Freedom. As the nameof the segment indicates, the focus of the History Channel series is on the theme of freedom (or the lack of it) in modern China.
In every way, this is a lesser history than the film from the China
in Revolution series. The film betrays its Western Cold War
perspective from the start. It begins with the story of a young man
who 'swam to freedom' from Guangzhou to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution. The filmmakers then interview a British Hong Kong
official who describes how, every night, hundreds of Chinese tried to
cross over to Hong Kong during the period. "They were escaping a
nightmare," the unseen narrator says, as the film cuts to footage of
the painted face of a Peking opera character performing one of the
eight 'model operas' that were among the few theatrical pieces
allowed to be performed during the period.
Like It's Right to Rebel, Roads to Freedom also combines historical
footage with personal testimony. But Roads to Freedom rarely
identifies the source of its historical footage, often using "filler"
images of Mao giving a speech, Red Guards in Tiananmen Square, etc.
Occasionally the film intercuts images of contemporary China as what
appears to be "stand ins" for more relevant footage that is missing
or was unavailable to the filmmakers.
The individuals who testify to their actions during the Cultural
Revolution are mostly average people who go largely unidentified.
Their stories are mostly about persecution, or (mostly bad) deeds
they committed as Red Guards: beating people, interrogating parents,
persecuting classmates.
The film, produced in Britain and featuring British narrators, ends
with Deng Xiaopeng and Margaret Thatcher signing the agreement that
will return governance of Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997. The film
loudly underscores the uneasiness that the British filmmakers feel
about the agreement, but does not discuss the unflattering chapter in
British history that led Hong Kong to fall under British rule in the
first place. The final scene tries to strike a note of optimism,
where we see how Deng Xiaopeng's free market policies have
transformed the city of Shenzen from a small village to an economic
powerhouse.
The filmmakers of Roads to Freedom seemed more intent to represent
the Cultural Revolution as part of the history of evil Communist rule
than as a recount of the key events that actually happened.
