“BEHEMOTH” took documentary-film audiences last year on a journey from the mines of inner Mongolia to a ghost city west of Beijing. Forlorn workers extract coal to power empty buildings. Without any dialogue, the film plays up fears that the government’s rapid expansion is an economic hoax expediting environmental ruin. From Southern China, “Hooligan Sparrow” documents the work of Ye Haiyan, a crusader for justice in the case of school principal who allegedly sexually abused six young girls. The fear in this film is that a government police state is suppressing justice.
Outsiders might be surprised at how documentarians are giving voice to these fears. And now, confirming the trend, comes “The Road”, which recently debuted in America with a new look into China’s economic engine. It is less artistic than “Behemoth” and less emotional than “Hooligan Sparrow”, but it no less threatening to the Communist Party.
To respond to the 2008-2009 global recession, China’s government poured $586 billion into economic stimulus. One project was the Xu-Huai highway in Hunan province, where Zhang Zanbo started filming in 2010. “The highway is like a golden apple: everyone wants a bite,” says a manager for the construction company, referred to as Mr Meng. A central figure in the film, Mr Meng quarrels constantly with locals who demand to be compensated for the properties they lost to construction, as well as with workers who go months without being paid. Meanwhile, government supervisors get red envelopes filled with cash and plenty of free cigarettes. Expensive liquor spares the company costly penalties for its shoddy construction work that must be redone. The film states that 37 bridges have collapsed across China since 2007. It notes, too, that corruption—both the paying of bribes and administrative cost of rooting out the problem—costs the country $2 billion a year.
Winter turns to spring and back to winter. Mr Zhang spent almost four years filming the construction. The highway is elevated high off the ground on concrete supports that must be inserted deep into the ground. Construction takes a long time because workers digging holes for the highway fill buckets with mud that must be carted away in wheelbarrows. It is modern nation-building, a second “great leap forward”—but with medieval methods.
Then come the local road authorities, for their bite at the apple. “They are checking for licenses. It is extortion,” Mr Meng says. The story escalates when the road authorities, apparently insulted by a lack of largess, recruit gangsters to attack the company’s workers with knives. From that attack comes the most shocking scene in the film: an injured worker’s hand is shown with two, small metal fragments jutting out. The skin has healed around the metal like bark around a nail. He pokes at the wound tenderly and shudders. This worker and his colleagues stick together to demand compensation for their injuries from Mr Meng’s company. About 13 months after the fight, they are finally paid compensation. “Building a highway is like fighting a war,” Mr Meng says.
“The Road” and its genre companions reinforce the narrative that China’s economy is headed for catastrophe. And there is evidence of a looming reckoning in the open condemnation locals and workers show for the Communist Party. The highway workers watching the Party’s anniversary-day extravaganza on television cut right through the pretence. Relaxing in their underwear, they discuss whether revolutionaries overthrow the Party before it turns 100 in 2021. “Joining the Party is a disgrace,” says one worker. “It has lost credibility.”
Mr Zhang says that while it might be hard for Western audiences to understand, at the grassroots social level in China it is common to see dissatisfied people criticising the Party with fierce language. Poor, migrant workers—such as those in the film— might not have access to outlets such as Weibo, a microblogging site, to vent their frustrations but find other means to express themselves. “The people’s words and wishes are like water, which can’t be blocked,” he said.
The Road’s authentic vignettes exist thanks to a sleight of hand by its film-maker. Mr Zhang said his subjects, including the senior managers of the construction company, all knew that he was filming a documentary. But they were not told about his real motive: “I just told them that I wanted to make a film about how difficult a highway was constructed in China.” He said he used a hidden camera for only one scene. “They all took it for granted that it would be a theme movie on the achievement of China’s development and labourer glamour, like what they were used to finding out from China Central Television or other TV networks. I was glad they thought in that way. That’s how I could complete this film without any problem.”
It is uncertain whether Mr Zhang’s work will reach a wide audience, being a subtitled film about infrastructure. But it should. It is a valuable complement to abstract statistics and news reports, an authentic view of China. “I hope every independent film-maker will play to his or her strength, and uses his or her camera to record all aspects of this magnificent, fast-developing, contradictory and disorderly nation, because these images will put together a real picture of China and will be left to the future,” Mr Zhang said. A wide viewership would encourage more film-makers to take the risk that he and his colleagues have to tell the truth.
