This Documentary Has Gone Viral, Taking China by Storm

Econintersect:  This has been viewed between 100 million and 200 million times in China in the first two days available on Tencent and other Chinese websites.  The social media platform Sina Weibo has had 280 million posts about the film.  It is titled “Under the Dome“, a reference to the American TV series of the same name, created by investigative reporter Chai Jing.  Jing has already received a congratulatory note from China’s new Environment Minister Chen Jining, a renowned environmental scientist, according to Peter Cai in China Spectator.   Click through Read more >> for full video.

Click to see larger image and wider view at The Telegraph.

Cai compares the importance of this film to the book “Silent Spring” written by Rachel Carson in 1962 which led to the overhaul of the U.S. national pesticide policy to eliminate DDT and related synthetic pesticides.

The magnitude of the pollution problems in China are so large that outdoor air pollution alone is estimated to cause between 350,000 and 500,000 premature deaths each year, according to an article over a year ago in The Telegraph.  The problem has received a nickname:  “Airpocalypse“.  The Telegraph says that air pollution trails only heart disease, dietary risk and smoking as a health risk in China.  The Economist reports that lives in northern China are shortened by about 5.5 years because of air pollution.

The film has incomplete English subtitles but the cinematography is excellent and the nature of the message, if not the details, comes through where the subtitles are absent.

An appeal has been made for help to add and improve English subtitles.  See here.

John Lounsbury

Sources:

• Chai Jing’s review: Under the Dome – Investigating China’s Haze (YouTube, 01 March 2015)

• The film that is going to change China (Peter Cai, China Spectator, 02 March 2015)

• China’s ‘airpocalypse’ kills 350,000 to 500,000 each year (Malcolm Moore, The Telegraph, 07 January 2014)

• Inside Beijing’s airpocalypse – a city made ‘almost uninhabitable’ by pollution (Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian, 16 December 2014)

• India v China Airpocalypse (The Economist, 06 February 2015)