People at meeting

Person speaking in language

01.00.00.00

listening, man

speaking

Shane Teehan:  These people gathered at a Shanghai textile mill in China are just some of 7000 workers who have lost their jobs in the past two years.

01.06

Person speaking in language

Shane Teehan:  They are here today to find out from factory management and communist party officials, if there's any chance of getting their jobs back.

01.21

Communist Offical: For the last year we didn't make any profit from our products. We are now trying to rent our factory workshops to new investors.

01.28

Shane Teehan:  What's extraordinary about this scene is that it's being filmed by a crew from Shanghai TV - a story which until recently would have been considered out of bounds for the Chinese media.

01.45

Person speaking in language

Shane Teehan:  For the first time in over 40 years, Chinese journalists like Liu Shar are being allowed to journey into the darker side of their society.

01.57

Map of China, people listening

Chinese language spoken - male then female.

at meeting,

television

Shane Teehan:  After the meeting Liu's  most recent report on the mill's plight is shown to the workers. 

02.21

For the past year Liu has been given unprecedented access to the factory and its management, allowing her in to film, what in China is a highly sensitive social issue.

People in room

Person speaking in language

talking together

Shane Teehan:  But not everyone is so keen on Liu's access.

02.37

We used to be a big customer of your electricity department. I'm very sorry that we have owed you the fee for such a long time.

02.44

Shane Teehan:  Today the factory manager is having to apologise to officials from the state's electricity department that he can't pay their bill, now a year overdue.

02.54

Ironically, the manager is defending his predicament to another state owned company that's also in trouble.

Man:  You should try to pay some of the fee.

3.09

Mill manager speaking

Mill manager:  It's the worst time for us.  It looks like three or four a.m. - before sunrise. Everything will become brighter soon. I'll do my best to pay some.

3.14

Mill manager saying goodbye, television, people watching

Shane Teehan:  It's the kind of reporting that we in the west have been used to for years, but in China the opportunity to prise open the system and show its problems is a revolution.

03.30

Person speaking in language - female voice

Shane Teehan: For the workers, Liu's report made their plight glaringly obvious. A workplace and system they had dedicated their lives to, without question, had collapsed -  taking their jobs and all support frrm the state as well.

03.44

Pan up to filmmaker walking on street

Liu:  The term "going off the work position" has just appeared.  In fact it means being unemployed. It is a painful step that the city has to undergo in its process of economic reform. 

04.05

Intv with Liu

It is really a pity that Television as a medium for mass communication arrived so late in China.  If it had arrived a few decades earlier, much more change would have taken place.  Now it's developing at a great rate and it has brought about astonishing changes in our life.

Building, television rushes, people working in TV studio

Shane Teehan:  This is where Liu Shar works. The state run broadcaster, Shanghai TV. Like the textile factory, they've also been wrenched from the bosom of the Communist Party. With their financial lifeline now cut, they too must seek out new markets.

04.56

Intv with Mr. Shen Chong Qing

Mr. Shen Chong Qing: Along with economic reform and an opening up to the outside world, the advertisement at our station has developed into a flourishing business.

05.15

TV ads and news

Shane Teehan: But for the President. it wasn't just a case of putting ads on TV. Chinese viewers, jaded by years of safely sanitised state fare, had switched off their TV sets in droves. 

05.30

Person speaking in language

Shane Teehan:  Strapped for cash, Shanghai TV had no choice but to win them back.   

Liu walking into room, speaking with manager

And that's why the shackles have been loosened on journalists like Liu Shar.

Shane Teehan:  But old habits die hard.

06.00

Manager:  After the pre-screening of your program, my supervisor called me and asked if some images of his speech could be cut from the film.  I told him not to worry, the film is based on the facts.

06.03

Shane Teehan:  Despite the managers openness to Liu's reporting, both of them are still answerable to the same boss - the Communist Party in Beijing.

So while Liu can show the downside of the unemployed, she must also find something positive to film.

06.29

People eating in

Chinese music

large restaurant,

waiters on roller skates

Shane Teehan:  As it turns out not a difficult task. With demand not supply the rule of the day, the textile factory has got out of fabric and into lobster and wine. 

06.43

Decaying factory floor was leased by the factory to private investors to attract new investment.  Now it makes most of its money by satisfying your hunger and taking away your money at speed on roller skates.

Intv with Liu

Liu:  This is Hongziji Restaurant, the biggest one in Shanghai.  It took only one month from the start of construction to the input of service.  It was built on the base of 10,000 square metre workshop - of Number 9 textile mill, the oldest and biggest one in Shanghai.

07.11

Billboard, fish, building

Shane Teehan:  Not only does Liu's report have to focus on the positive, but it contains no criticism of the government or question a single government official.

07.35

Intv with

Liu:  Our directors and editors have been educated by the government and influenced by national tradition for many years.  We have a standard to what role the media should play in our society - we won't display anything without caring about its effect on society.

07.45

Intv with STV president, WANG ZIAO PING

President STV: The journalist must bear the responsibility for the society.  It is our duty to lead the public.  After watching our programs on TV, the audience can be educated by the correct thought and improve the standard of social morals.

08.11

Men meeting in room, man with video walking through

Shane Teehan: For Liu's colleagues at Shanghai TV the past twenty five years have been spent producing earnest propaganda pieces extolling the virtues of the Communist system. 

08.38

Although filmmaker Song Ji Chaing is from the old guard at Shanghai TV, he has a different attitude than his supervisors about the role of television in China.

Man walking into office, putting video in machine and watching

Song Ji Chaing voiceover:  To my thinking we can take the documentary as a means for educating the public.  It should be a forum in which the filmmakers and audience can draw on each other's experience.

09.00

Intv with Song Ji Chiang

Song Ji Chiang sync:  I have been part of the great development of television in Shanghai during the last twenty five years.  If we review the programs made ten years ago, we will feel shame at them - what a job we did before!

09.21

Television image, Chiang watching, men rowing boat

Shane Teehan:  Just a few years ago, Song Ji Chiang would have never dreamt that today he would be making films that expose the breakdown of the Communist system in rural China. 

10.00

In Song's film, old man Jin faces a crisis. He's spent most of his life on the Mayon River, transporting people and timber.  But with the recent completion of a motorway through this mountainous region, those days are over. 

10.15

The main problem for old Jin now, is that his son, who he relies on for his living, has applied to change his living status to the city - something once unheard of in China.

Jin:  You really think you have nothing to do so you just want to go.

10.47

Son:  Whatever happens or whatever you say I'm still going to go.

10.56

Jin:  Damn it!  There's an old saying. If you're going to get rich do it at home.

11.02

Son:  People have left here and gotten rich. Why do I have to stay here?

11.14

Water dripping, men in boat, man pulling boat

Song Ji Chaing: I realised that the conflict between the father and son reflected an immense issue in our society.  The different opinion on life from different generations. 

11.26

Along with social reform, the audience has improved their appreciation of TV programs. They don't like programs that just gloss over the reality.  Now they are keen on documentaries that have a profound social meaning.

11.48

Jin climbing back in boat, rowing

Shane Teehan:  After years of heavy handed state control, the dilemma for Ji Chiang is how much he censors himself.

12.14

Intv with Song Ji Chaing

Song Ji Chiang:  We haven't reached the stage that we can do whatever we want.  It is true that we have to think about the government stand in our work.  TV stations are run by the government in China.  The social reform needs peaceful environment and we have to make allowances for that.

12.22

Film crew filming, pan down building, tailor working, man walking with cane

Shane Teehan:  The crack has appeared in what can now be said in Chinese media and directors like Zhu Xiao from the new class of Chinese intellectuals are wasting little time in forcing it open. 

12.55

This old building on the corner of People's Square in the centre of Shanghai was once a stable for British racehorses.  When the Communists took power in 1949, the servants who had worked under the British landlord were allowed to stay and some remain today. 

13.11

Men working on building site

The stable, now situated on land valued worth millions is to be demolished to make way for a new commercial property.

13.34

Intv with Liu, woman cooking and cleaning pot, man walking with cane, film crew filming

Zhu Chee:  In a sense we have to protect the old ones like these. People like here, although the living conditions are not good. But people think the transportation is good.

13.40

And they are used to this kind of lifestyle, so, but you know, it's not in accordance with the whole atmosphere.  So I'm afraid that this place will be replaced.

Shane Teehan:  Once again the future of these old people's lives is in  the hands of those who care little for their fate.

14.09

Zhu Chee:   Old people living here, they can support each other.  There's people who have no children here and the community can help them. 

14.16

But if this place is closed down they will move far away and they will live in the so-called new kind of buildings.  They will have no connection of each other. 

Just like where I live, the neighbours do not speak to each other.  We have to think of a way to help these people.

Fish being cleaned, Zhu Chee at markets

Shane Teehan:  Zhu Chee herself lives on the outskirts of Shanghai, increasingly hemmed in by the city's unbelievable growth.

14.57

Although Zhu grew up in the country, she was fortunate to be educated at one of Shanghais most prestigious universities.  It was there that she gained a taste for challenging the system. 

Zhu and friends

People speaking in language

sitting around

a table

Shane Teehan:  Most nights Zhu and her friends gather at her apartment to talk.

15.24

Zhu Chee: In my program, I want to focus on the change of the residents' lives at the stable.  It must reflect the changes taking place at the square.

15.27

Shane Teehan:  It's people like Zhu and her friends generation that have finally been given the opportunity to shape the emergence of a more open China.  For Zhu, it was her way of speaking out.

15.37

Zhu Chee:   We can only call the attention.  We are not the people who are in power. Because I think, our responsibility is to record the history and if we have the power of film, you know, it's a better way to persuade people than to tell people how to do it.

14.48

Intv with STV President, WANG ZIAO PING

STV President:  To my thinking there is no absolute freedom of the press the world over.  That freedom must tally with the actual situation in any country.  It is confined under the given political and cultural conditions of the specified nation.

16.08

Drips from roof, clothes hanging, film crew filming

Shane Teehan:  The following morning Zhu returns to continue filming.

16.43

Zhu Chee:  By broadcasting this, maybe it can call the attention of people to protect the old things, to protect our history, and then they can cherish their life now.

16.47

Person wheeling bicycle, Zhu watching, leaf on ground

Shane Teehan:  As China continues the transformation to a market economy, state television is being forced to change.  To win an audience, Beijing has had to loosen its vice like grip. 

17.05

The question now is how much media freedom they'll tolerate.  In the meantime, filmmakers like Zhu Chee are wasting little time in showing that not all is so pretty in the People's Paradise,

END

17.37