“It’s the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”
- Albert Camus
Death by China: Confronting the Dragon – A Global Call to Action is a non-fiction book by economics professor Peter Navarro and Greg Autry that chronicles, “From currency manipulation and abusive trade policies, to slave labor and deadly consumer products”,[1] the alleged threats to global economic stability and world peace posed by China’s “corrupt and ruthless” governing Communist Party.
The book has been translated into Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean. A feature length documentary film based on the book and also titled Death by China is under production.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_China_(book)
Book: Death by China: Confronting the Dragon – A Global Call to Action
Check out the DEATH BY CHINA – PDF File
From best-selling author and filmmaker, Peter Navarro, comes DEATH BY CHINA, a documentary feature that pointedly confronts the most urgent problem facing America today – its increasingly destructive economic trade relationship with a rapidly rising China. Since China began flooding U.S. markets with illegally subsidized products in 2001, over 50,000 American factories have disappeared, more than 25 million Americans can’t find a decent job, and America now owes more than 3 trillion dollars to the world’s largest totalitarian nation. Through compelling interviews with voices across the political spectrum, DEATH BY CHINA exposes that the U.S.-China relationship is broken and must be fixed if the world is going to be a place of peace and prosperity.
http://www.deathbychinamovie.com/
I watched the film and found it to be a very one sided view of a real problem.
While fundamentally right, the film is nothing but a 100 minute repletion of the same idea: “China is bad”.
The “badness” of China is represented as a three spike harpoon pointed towards us: Killing American jobs, killing our babies with bad products, and of course: “The Chinese army is preparing to kill Americans”
The pacing of the film is bound to make someone run out of his seat after 10 minutes. Every twenty seconds a new talking head is throwing a negative comment on China, over and over, and over…
About 45 minutes in the film the director broke the chaotic pace and introduced a musical break, when, again, a song about the badness of China is suppose to give us a moment for contemplation.
There is no story telling, no cause and effect narrative, and no chronological progression of events. At times the very short soundbites seem thrown on the screen at random, totally out of the context. I personally think that even Nazi or Communist propaganda had more taste in making their point.
After the song, the fast paced talking head marathon is commencing again, till the end of the movie.
The conclusion of the film was for me as disappointing as the rest of it, as the writer/director simply avoided making a real point.
I thought he would propose American protectionism, or he would expose why the congress failed in protecting our interests, or he would call for a full embargo against China.
Instead, the Harvard School of Economics PHD Professor, proposed that we all look for the “Made in China” label on the products we buy, and we simply avoid them if they show that. Earlier in the film he has also shown many goods in the US, were impossible to find unless they were “Made in China”.
So what is one to do?
I think this is a pathetic cop out from making a real point. While it is easy to point out problems, my respect goes to authors that also propose solutions.
I still recommend the film, as you can still learn something out of it, but be warned, dont expect any intellectual stimulation, all you’ll get is some very primitive scare tactics worthy of the McCarthy era…
For the serious student of China history and politics, I recommend “China from the inside” or “China’s Century of Humiliation”. Both these films taught me a lot.