Can Hu Jintao learn from 'The Rise of the Great Powers'?

LIANG JING

BEIJING, China, Feb. 14

"The Rise of the Great Powers," a 12-part documentary, has recently been aired repeatedly across China. The historical program, carefully crafted by state broadcaster CCTV and first aired last November, has garnered extensive attention.
The main significance of this is that the series was not the result of government propaganda. Rather, it was the voluntary creation of a few intellectuals and members of the cultural elite, in an effort to exercise influence over society and especially over the nation's leaders. It followed in the footsteps of such influential documentaries as "He Shang" ("The Yellow River Elegy," produced in 1988 and accused of inciting the 1989 student democracy movement) and "Zou Xiang Gong He" ("Towards a Republic"), a TV series about the late Qing Dynasty.
Under the communist system in China, it is still risky to make documentaries as such. Therefore, this kind of work is rare. What is even rarer is that this documentary was endorsed by the government after it was produced. This has caused media both inside and outside China to search for the unspoken message behind this unusual occurrence.
An opinion piece in the New York Times said the documentary marked the end of an era in which China kept a low profile in order to preserve its potential power, in keeping with the political philosophy of many among the Chinese elite. However, the elite could no longer resist the temptation to spread their dream of rising as a great power, the theory goes. Though most Westerners seem to buy this idea, it does not adequately explain the significance of the documentary in China's political and intellectual circles.
For many Chinese audiences, "The Rise of the Great Powers" was a breath of fresh air. The series abandoned the old, stale communist view of history and offered a more objective look at the rise of nine powerful nations in modern times: Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, Japan and the United States. Most impressive to Chinese viewers were the interviews with well-known scholars from these countries, who voiced their views on modern historical processes.
In this way, the producers of this documentary indirectly led Chinese audiences to ask two rather sensitive questions: Why hasn't China achieved such a rise? How should China rise?
Why did the producers direct these questions at the Chinese people at this time? My view is that more and more intellectuals in China are worried about the nation's leadership, especially about the ignorance and impotence of Hu Jintao's administration. Despite the economic development that has captured world attention, China remains directionless, plagued with rampant corruption and consumed by deepening social conflicts.
The worst is that China still lacks democracy and the rule of law after a century of modernization. Chinese society is riddled with factors that make the future unpredictable. Faced with all these challenges, the leaders stick to their old, stale mentality and stereotyped language. They provide no spark of inspiration or leadership for the reformists.
In the past few years, the intellectual community in China has been trying by various means to lure and push Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao to take key steps toward modernization. The production of "The Rise of the Great Powers" is one such effort.
Let there be no mistake -- the documentary indeed avoided some important historical facts while focusing on others. Nevertheless, given the situation in China today, the program's producers played a clever hand. They shifted the focus to an examination of the experience of other modern countries, away from the government's empty slogan of "building a harmonious society." This new focus calls for answers to the questions that Hu wishes to avoid, which a country in the throes of modernization cannot afford to avoid.
I believe that the wisdom revealed in "The Rise of the Great Powers" has brought pressure to bear on Hu Jintao and his political strategists. It is not difficult for Chinese audiences to see the inseparable link between modernization and the respect for human rights and human dignity. The documentary showed that foreign leaders were not averse to learning from other countries -- revealing, for instance, the great advances that Russia's Peter the Great introduced after he personally went to Holland to learn from the Dutch.
Will "The Rise of the Great Powers" inspire leadership in Hu Jintao? So far, there is no evidence to encourage optimism. However, the broadcast of the documentary and its impact on the Chinese people reveal how different today's knowledge- and information-based environment is from a hundred years ago. Ordinary people have much broader access to the outside world -- but still a lot to learn about history.
The pursuit of a higher level of knowledge, especially a growing understanding of modern societies, is becoming a social trend in China. The enlightened few are no longer the only force pushing for basic changes necessary for modernization. Rather, such changes are being actualized by the awakening masses.
The key question is: Will Hu Jintao be pushed along this path, to become a real leader?
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(Liang Jing is a freelance commentator on current affairs, based in Beijing. Translated and edited from the Chinese; the original may be found at www.ncn.org. © Copyright 2007 by Liang Jing)

Translated by Jennifer Tai; Edited by Kathleen Hwang