China’s growing cultural muscle

I tend to discuss China’s growing assertiveness with reference its economy or foreign policy. It’s a pity, because China’s increasingly muscular cultural scene is illuminating. If you want to understand the trajectory of China over the next few decades, it’s vital to observe the stories China tells about itself.

Check out this trailer for the new film ‘The Eight Hundred.’ It is a dramatization of the Battle of Shanghai, a particularly bloody siege in the Second Sino-Japanese war – part of what we would call the Pacific Theatre of World War 2.

A few points to reflect on:

• The Second World War may be the most dramatized war in modern cinematic history. Were these films your primary source about the war, you would presume its centre of gravity lay somewhere between Omaha Beach and a blitzed out London. The Eastern front, and to an even greater extent, the Chinese theater, are rarely mentioned; I suspect there are more blockbuster films about the American civil war than both combined. One benefit of a thriving film industry in China is that new historical stories will be told.
  
• These stories will increasingly be filtered through a nationalistic lens. The FT reports that China’s media regulator required changes to the film, because the troops that fought in the battle were from the Nationalist Kuomintang army. The Nationalists would later fight (and lose) a civil war against the Communists, before retreating to Taiwan.
  
  Nationalistic depictions of war are not unheard of in Hollywood today (American Sniper was a particularly egregious example), but more often than not, contemporary war films emphasise moral ambiguity, despair, and the senselessness of violence. Based on the trailer, ‘The Eight Hundred’ is more Horace than Owen with regard to: dulce et deocrum est pro patria mori. The trailer ends with the following line:
  
  “To my dear wife YuZhi, when our kids grow up, they shall join the army to avenge their father. To devote themselves to their country. So that our descendants won’t suffer anymore humiliation.“