Expect a torrent of television specials as we approach the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing. Everywhere we look, from kids shows (NickToons promises Chinese culture and Mandarin language wrapped around a new animated superhero) to news, business and sports specials, TV plans a deluge of China-related programming.
Some have been in the works for more than a year. Many wrap the recent earthquake into the story line as an obvious addendum.
The serious run-up to the August Olympics begins tonight when PBS’ “Frontline” documents the lives of nine next-generation Chinese in a film titled “Young and Restless in China” (at 9 on KRMA-Channel 6). Give them points for longitudinal reporting: The film is the result of four years of visiting and keeping track of these individuals.
These are the people who will be running China, we’re told: Westernized, interested in money and material things, aware of the inter-connected world and, in deeply personal ways, often torn between tradition and modernization.
Miranda Hong, a successful marketing executive who graduated from a top business school, says: “My generation is confused. When I was a child, we needed ration tickets to buy things like fabric and oil. Since the 1990s, it’s a totally different world.”
The film is set to a soundtrack of Chinese hip- hop music that helps tell the story. The profiles bounce among the group at a lively pace. It’s fine as far as it goes.
But PBS’ two-hour effort is vastly overshadowed by an upcoming series from Ted Koppel, that is both more in-depth and more accessible.
“Koppel on Discovery: The People’s Republic of Capitalism” is a four-part series debuting on cable’s Discovery Channel July 9, locally at 8 p.m. This is the most thorough and thoroughly entertaining approach to the subject in memory.
Koppel himself has said, “both in the reporting and the presentation, this is the most extensive project I’ve ever undertaken.” That diligence shows on the screen.
To help explain the interdependence of China and the U.S., Koppel follows laid-off American workers at a job fair, jobless because their employers now out-source to China; then he talks to the American who runs the Chinese factory. He notes China’s cheap labor as he traces the parts of an Apple iPod (designed in California, assembled in China) and finds that for every $299 iPod, Apple makes $80 profit while the Chinese assembly plant makes just $4. The newly rich in China shop at Wal-Mart, of course.
In his wise but easy conversational style, Koppel explores the largest migration in human history, as millions of Chinese peasants move from the countryside to the booming cities. He blends the earthquake into the coverage seamlessly. In the second hour, “MAOism to MEism,” he looks at values, morality, sexuality, and political and religious freedom, profiling a number of individuals in Chongqing, a city of 13.5 million people that’s poised to grow to 20 million. “It could be the most populous city that most Americans have never heard of,” Koppel notes.
Subsequent hours are devoted to China’s new love affair with the automobile — 9 million new vehicles hit the road each year — and the explosion of car manufacturing, as well as traffic and pollution.
Finally, Koppel enumerates the downsides of a booming economy, including increased corruption, horrible pollution from coal and the question of human rights.
“The People’s Republic of Capitalism” is history, sociology, pop culture and cultural anthropology in a winning package. Micro to macro, we get to know individuals and global trends.
Give Koppel and producer Tom Bettag kudos for wide-ranging, smart and engaging work. It’s what we’ll measure other television China projects against.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
