Amazing China
- -A propaganda documentary film for the Communist Party of China. Amazing China is a 2018 Chinese documentary film that displays China's achievements in science, technology, industry, and poverty reduction since Xi Jinping took power of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in 2012.
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A propaganda documentary film for the Communist Party of China.
Amazing China (厉害了, 我的国) is a 2018 Chinese documentary film that displays China’s achievements in science, technology, industry, and poverty reduction since Xi Jinping took power of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in 2012. Internationally, it is widely considered to be a propaganda film, and an effort by the Communist Party of China to increase its soft power. It was co-produced by the China Central Television and China Film Co., Ltd, and released in Mainland China on March 2, 2018, distributed by Alibaba Pictures. The director is Wei Tie. On 19 April 2018, the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China issued a memo requesting that Chinese websites and cinemas stop showing the film. The film was screened in a theater in Macao from May 9 to May 14 in 2018.
The content of the film is from a six-episode TV documentary with the same English title (zh) shown in 2017 (Chinese title: 辉煌中国), including the construction of the China Railway High-speed, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope. The film also is believed to be a significant step towards a personality cult of Xi Jinping by some observers.
It was reported by South China Morning Post that some state companies and government-affiliated organizations required employees to watch the film. Douban, the leading film review website in China, disabled the comments and rating functions of the film, instead the page of the film showed a so-called “media rating” of 8.5/10, with a collection of reviews written by several state media including Xinhua and the People’s Daily.
The original Chinese title of the film is “厉害了, 我的国” (pinyin: lìhaile, wǒde guó roughly translates to “Amazing, My Country”), and derives from an online slang expression meaning “bravo, my brother”, often used by several official social media accounts of state organizations like the Communist Youth League of China.
Huajian Group, a Chinese shoe making company hiring thousands of Ethiopians, was portrayed in the film as a model of “introducing China’s experience of prosperity to Africa.” According to a report of the Associated Press, though, the company’s Ethiopian workers complained about low wages, the lack of safety equipment, forced labor and not being permitted to form a trade union. [wikipedia]