The Dam: Chinese Communist Party

If you love TED talks, or are perplexed by how a third world communist country can grow so fast, or are interested in how Confucius is inextricably connected to China's cultural identity, or you doubt whether Chinese Racial Superiority exists: Watch this entire video. You will be enlightened and you may find something you would like to look deeper into.
://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/martin_jacques_understanding_the_rise_of_china.html

"The Chinese view the state, not just as an intimate member of the family … but as the head of the family.”

The Chinese people represented in the documentary were presented in multiple lights. The farmers seem to be fatalistic. They are unhappy with their lives, without education, and by the nature of their very philosophy, they are hopeless. They feel that by sending their daughter to work they are exploiting her, when in reality, this is a result of the state exploiting them. Even with these feelings, their belief in fate gives them no sense of agency. I believe in this section of the film we see the oppressiveness of an authoritarian communist state. Instead of seeing the money trickle down from a regulated enterprise into the pockets of the workers, we see that the state's main financial interests is in maintaining a strong national symbol, a dam.


While the dam may represent a powerful economy, it does not represent individual freedom.

We see never see a strong sense of cultural identity like Jacques discusses (the ideological origins are explained in the video I introduced at the beginning of this post).But in one scene, where a state representative is showing us fake relocatee homes, he tells us that all Chinese are happy. This is clearly a lie. It is a form of national propaganda. Espousing the feat of having created a utopia has been done by many communist governments in the past, up until their final days.

The entertainer seems to be the only other Chinese person represented in the film who is not miserable. He is portrayed as being "westernized" in order to gain capital.  All of his mannerisms, etiquette, seem artificially western. The director may want to present the idea that authentic Chinese culture is being washed away by free market modernization. Is this for the greater good? Is this even what is really happening? Isn't it just as easy to say that the ideals of a communist government are responsible?  There is not a single message to take away from this film, nor a single exploiter, however, the families along the Yangtze are definitely victims.

"Up the Yangtze" definitely supports my view that the unlimited authority of the state exploits/marginalizes its laborers in order to create a strong symbol of state power. Instead of seeing a good example of trickle-down economics, we see the working class being exploited and ignored by the state. The state controls most of the enterprises and therefore most of the money. This is why instead of seeing the worker's receiving humane wages and pursuing happiness, we see them being forced off of the state's land. We see them, but their government does not. The damn is supposed to be a symbol of economic progress, but can also be viewed as a symbol of state oppression. Here we see Burke's example of symbols using people instead of people using symbols.