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♪ Oh say, can you see ♪
♪ By the dawn's early light, ♪
♪ What so proudly we hailed ♪
♪ At the twilight's last gleaming ♪
♪ Whose broad stripes and bright stars, ♪
♪ Through the perilous fight ♪
♪ Over the ramparts we watched, ♪
♪ Were so gallantly streaming. ♪
♪ And the rockets red glare, ♪
♪ The bombs bursting in air, ♪
♪ Gave proof through the night ♪
♪ That our flag was still there. ♪
♪ Oh, say, does-- ♪
- I pity a country that would come up against us.
The synergy with air, land, and sea forces
and our ability to control the battle space
and seize the high ground is devastating.
All countries respect the power of the United States
and they respect how dominant we are in this region.
And we get better and better and better.
(drums pounding)
- Tonight to ten,
a rare glimpse of China's ambitious expansion
in one of the world's most contested regions.
We report from the South China Sea,
where the Chinese are warning off anyone
who comes too close to their building program.
- We continue our look this morning
at what China does not want you to see.
The United States says the superpower
is reclaiming land in the South China Sea.
- The fact that we're dealing with a situation right now
where we, the US, has to be much more aggressive
in dealing with the Chinese government.
- CNN has learned that the US Navy
is about to send a destroyer there.
Let's go to our CNN chief--
- [Announcer] CNN got exclusive access to classified
US surveillance flights over the islands.
- [John Narrating] The threat of China is becoming big news.
The media is beating the drums of war
as the world is being primed to regard China
as a new enemy.
- [Announcer] China's alarming creation of
entirely new territory in the South China Sea
is one part of a broader military push
that some fear is to challenge US dominance in the region.
- [John Narrating] China is building airstrips
in the South China Sea on disputed islands
condemned by an international tribunal.
This is now a flashpoint for war
between China and America.
What is not news is that China itself is under threat.
These American bases form a giant noose,
encircling China with missiles, bombers, warships.
All the way from Australia through the Pacific,
to Asia, and beyond.
- If you were in Beijing looking out,
you stood on the tallest building in Beijing
and looked out at the Pacific Ocean,
you'd see American warships.
You'd see Guam is about to sink
because there's so many missiles pointed at China.
You'd look up at Korea and see
American armaments pointing at China.
You'd see Japan, which is basically,
Japan's a glove over the American fist.
I think if I was Chinese, I'd have a little to worry about
about American aggressiveness.
- And we have China surrounded
and we're doing more all the time to try and
keep it surrounded and deepen that containment of China.
But China presents a fascinating case
of a country that is independent,
doesn't have foreign bases on its territory,
growing very rapidly,
not as rapidly now as it did for 30 years,
but still the second-ranking economy in the world.
- We have an adversary
and that adversary is China and that adversary,
unless there is dramatic reform inside China,
will be our enemy someday.
- One myth I think really needs to be dispelled
is that somehow China's aiming to replace America
and gonna run the world. (laughs)
First of all, the Chinese are not that stupid.
The West, with its Christian roots,
are about converting other people into their beliefs.
The Chinese are not about that.
Again, I'm not degrading the Western culture.
I'm just pointing out the inherent nature,
the DNA's of two different cultures.
The Chinese 2000 years ago built the Great Wall
to keep the barbarians out, not to invade them.
- [John Narrating] As the world's economic power
moves rapidly to Asia, the response of the Untied States
is to deploy the majority of its naval forces to Asia
and the Pacific.
This massive military buildup is known in Washington as
the "Pivot to Asia."
The target is China.
The great power game in the 21st century
is called perpetual war.
For America's unchallenged arms industry,
the annual prize is huge profits
from almost 600 billion dollars of military spending.
- [Announcer] Once an imaginary weapon on Star Wars,
the electromagnetic gun is now reality.
- You're sitting here thinking about these
next-generation and futuristic ideas
and we've got scientists who have designed these
and it's coming to life.
- [John Narrating] And the smartest weapons need enemies.
- As a Pacific nation, the United States
will play a larger and long-term role
in shaping this region and its future.
I have directed my national security team
to make our presence and mission in the Asian-Pacific
a top priority.
- In one sense, is the US already at war with China?
- Yes.
On the ground and in the air.
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama,
has committed to trillions
of dollars to our nuclear arsenal.
He's committing trillions of future dollars
to war in space and we need an enemy for all this money
and China's the perfect enemy.
- The aim of this film is to break a silence.
The United States and China may well be on a path to war
and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable.
In a few years, China has become the world's
second biggest economic power.
The United States is the world's biggest military power,
with bases and missiles and ships
covering every continent, every ocean.
China is a threat to this dominance, says Washington,
but who is the threat?
This film is about shifting power and great danger.
It's also a film about the human spirit
and the rise of an extraordinary resistance among people
on the front line of a coming war
where the words "never again" have an urgent meaning
for all of us.
(somber music)
- [John Narrating] This is Bikini,
the rim of an ancient underwater volcano
in the Marshall Islands.
With its necklace of 23 islands,
Bikini is a place of beauty and silence and menace.
Look closely where the Emerald Lagoon
suddenly falls into a vast black hole.
This is the crater of one of
the greatest manmade explosions,
the hydrogen bomb they call Bravo.
It vaporized an entire island
and poisoned almost everything and everyone.
As our plane flew low, we seemed to touch its deathly void.
The Marshall Islands lie in the vast Pacific Ocean
between the United States and Asia.
Captured from the Japanese in World War Two,
they've long been America's strategic secret,
it's stepping stone to Asia and China.
(guitar music)
People here sustain themselves for thousands of years
with abundant fish, breadfruit, and coconuts.
They were skilled navigators who sailed by the stars.
Westerners might call this paradise.
All that changed in 1946
when the United States took over the Marshall Islands
as a Trust Territory with an obligation
to protect the health and wellbeing of the people.
A nightmare began.
The islands were turned into a laboratory
for the testing of nuclear weapons
and the people into guinea pigs.
- Crossroads, scene 24, take two.
(clicks)
- [John Narrating] In this propaganda film,
the Bikini islanders are being deceived.
Unknown to them, plans were already underway
to destroy their paradise forever.
- Will you ask King Judah that the United States government
now wants to attempt to turn this great,
destructive force into something good for mankind
and that these experiments here at Bikini
are the first step in that direction.
(speaks foreign language)
Tell them that's fine,
everything being in God's hands, it must be good.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Announcer] 87 ships take position three miles
off Bikini to suffer the shattering impact
of the fifth atomic bomb.
- [John Narrating] An armada of warships
was assembled in Bikini Lagoon
in order to blow them to bits.
(chain clanking)
- [Announcer] The decks of the 73 test ships
anchored in Bikini Lagoon
are scenes of feverish activity
as scientists plot experimental programs
designed to furnish data on blast effects
of the mighty atom bomb.
Animals of many kinds--
- [John Narrating] Animals were strapped to the decks
like a perverse Noah's Ark.
The experiment was to see how they died,
how they burned.
- [Announcer] Special ointments are applied
to determine their protective quality.
Other parts of the exposed areas
are being left bare to the atom blasts.
- [Soldier] Three, two, one.
(eerie music)
- [John Narrating] Being on Bikini today
is disturbing ghosts.
I struggle through the jungle to the bunker
where they pressed the button at 6:45 on the morning
of the H-Bomb test.
Now claimed by the undergrowth,
it's like a subterranean temple to modern times.
They drank Milk Maid Powdered Milk,
smoked Lucky Strike Cigarettes,
and later this sign was erected that's beyond irony.
It says,
"Please leave this property as you find it,
"thank you for your kindness and understanding."
(water drips)
(jovial music)
- [Announcer] The Momselles give their all for their art
and you can just bet
that audience is giving with the wolf calls.
- [Male Announcer] The bikini, named after
the atomic explosion in the Pacific.
The bikini was an explosion everywhere.
- [John Narrating] In 1946, the bikini swimsuit was launched
to celebrate the nuclear explosions
that had destroyed life on Bikini Island.
The inventor of the bikini, a Frenchman,
made his fortune.
Today a bikini body is promoted in magazines
as an object of desire and good health.
The bodies of the people of Bikini and other islands
are the most irradiated in the world.
All these women have had thyroid cancer.
Today, Bikini is unfit for human life.
Radiation poisons the food and water,
and issues registered unsafe on a Geiger Counter.
The abandoned cemetery looks out to where
the sun rose one morning, then rose again
as apocalypse.
The equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb
was exploded in these islands
everyday for 12 years.
A scarred beauty has returned to the island
but the people haven't.
Exiled to barren islands, many of them starved.
In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson told them
it was safe to go home.
(Geiger Counter clicks)
But it wasn't safe.
And the US authorities knew it wasn't safe.
- What happened as a result of the Bravo test
was that a cover-up was launched
very shortly after March one.
There's such a history of wrong information,
outright lies, deception.
There was no attempt to take the most conservative approach
and make sure that everybody was okay.
- They knew the way the fallout was going to go.
And they took that risk and went ahead
and detonated the bomb, knowing full well
which way it was going to go.
They still had an opportunity to evacuate,
even on the day of the shot.
But these people were not evacuated,
we were not evacuated,
and the people in the path were not evacuated.
So that only leaves one to believe that
number one, the United States needed some guinea pigs
to study what the effects of radiation would do.
And that's a pretty strong indication
that the United States knew that.
- It seems extraordinary, here we are,
this far into the 21st century,
talking to people still frightened
of all that nuclear fallout, all those tests,
all those years ago.
The impression I get is that
there's so little trust among people.
- The US is trying to provide as much
information, as much good information as we can.
And so I wouldn't accept the characterization that
there've been lies and cover-ups.
- The word guinea pigs comes up a lot from these survivors.
- I would refer you to our embassy website on that.
- I've read it.
- And that question was looked at
during the Clinton administration
and that was not the conclusion they came to.
- [John Narrating] The secret of the Marshall Islands
is Project 4.1.
Declassified documents reveal a scientific program
that began as a study of mice
and became a study of human beings exposed to radiation.
- [Radio Announcer] Chicago is where it all began.
And to the AEC Argonnne Labs in Chicago last week
came seven men, natives of the Marshall Islands.
Levin is from Omelek.
He and the rest were irradiated by our
March 19th '54 hydrogen bomb test.
John is mayor of Rongelap,
which is 100 miles from Bikini.
John, as we said, is a savage,
but a happy, amenable savage.
His grandfather ran almost naked on his small atoll.
The white man brought money and religion
and a market for his copa.
John Reeds knows about God and is a pretty good mayor.
The iron room is a radiation detector for human beings.
Inside John the mayor,
whose first visit to the white man's country
meant San Francisco cable cars and Chicago skyscrapers
and streamlined trains,
whose first visit to the white man's country
meant the iron room.
A savage governs his life by ritual
and he understands this because
he thinks of it as a new ritual.
Sitting alone inside the room,
outside, a strange kind of priest in a long, white coat.
When the ritual of the iron room was over for John,
it began for the others.
As each finished, he was told it was over
and he was given apples and other good things to eat.
Then he took off the ritual clothing
and the seven men put on the suits and top coats
they had been lent in Hawaii
which they would return in Hawaii on their way back
in the Marshall Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
- The United States government documents
clearly demonstrate that its scientists
conducted human radiation experiments
with Marshallese citizens.
Some of our people were injected with
or coerced to drink fluids laced with radiation.
Other experimentation involved the impurposeful
and premature resettlement of people
on islands highly contaminated by weapons tests
to study how human beings absorb radiation
from their foods and environment.
(guitar music)
- [John Narrating] These people are guinea pigs.
They are part of the experiment Project 4.1.
They're being returned to Rongelap,
an island 100 miles from Bikini by the US Navy.
They were told repeatedly, it was safe to go home.
This happy couple believed they were going home to safety.
The man is John Anjain, the mayor of Rongelap.
The "happy savage" from the iron room in Chicago.
His wife is Madura, and this is their baby son Lekage.
They had no idea of the horror that lay ahead.
They are being returned to an island
described by a US atomic energy official
"as by far the most contaminated place on earth."
He added, "it will be interesting to get a measure
"of human uptake when people
"live in a contaminated environment."
The people of Rongelap remained on their poison island
for 28 years as guinea pigs.
The objects of regular, scientific examination.
(bell rings)
The islanders pleaded with the US authorities
to move them to safety as evidence emerged
of the second generation,
the children were also poisoned.
Desperate to leave, the islanders
called on Greenpeace to rescue them.
This ship, the Rainbow Warrior,
moved the entire population to an uncontaminated island.
They called it Operation Exodus.
(native music)
(eerie music)
This is Doctor Robert Conard,
a leading medical scientist
of Brookhaven National Laboratories.
Conard devoted his distinguished career
to examining the islanders.
He wrote, "the habitation of these people on the island
"will afford the most valuable ecological radiation data
"on human beings.
"The various radio isotopes present
"can be traced from the soil to the food chain
"and into human beings."
Doctor Conard gained the trust of whole communities
when he brought the islanders to New York to be examined,
he showed them the sights
and had them over for a barbecue.
When John Anjain's son Lekage died aged 18,
Doctor Conard sent the man they called a savage
a sympathy card.
From your friend, Bob.
In 1957, Madura Anjain was the smiling young woman
seen here on her way back to Rongelap,
unaware of the danger she and her family faced.
This is Madura 28 years later,
grieving the death of her son
Lekage from radiation poisoning.
Like her son and her husband,
Madura died from a virulent cancer.
- I don't see any great clinics that have been
established by, if not the Department of Energy,
certainly not by the US government.
- There's a clinic downtown in Majuro.
There's also a Whole Body Counter.
You can have the plutonium in your body measured as well.
Anyone can, for free.
- [John Narrating] This is the plutonium measuring shop
where they'll tell you how radioactive you are.
People waiting to be tested
are welcomed with a video
showing their islands being blown up.
And this reassuring commentary.
(speaks foreign language)
This is Rinok, a refugee from
the poisoned island of Rongelap,
whose family owned land and lived a secure, prosperous life.
Now she lives in a shack in the capital, Majuro,
with her children and grandchildren.
She has no water, no sanitation.
- [John] And power, she has electricity?
- [John Narrating] In 1986, the United States
granted limited independence to the Marshall Islanders
on condition that they accepted a mere
150 million dollars compensation
for the damage caused by nuclear testing.
A claims tribunal was set up
and soon ran out of money
and appealed to the US Congress more than a decade ago,
still awaits a reply.
Darlene Keju-Johnson was a young health worker
who became the champion of her people
after she discovered the full extent of their suffering
caused by nuclear testing that
many more islands were poisoned than the Americans claimed.
(applause)
This remarkable speech in 1983 broke the silence.
- I bring greetings from the Marshall Islands
and throughout Micronesia.
We have hundreds of women who have miscarriages.
We have leukemia cancers.
We have thyroid cancers.
We have stillborn babies.
We have nowadays, I just got back from home
and I've talked to many women and men in the population,
is that we have babies we call jellyfish babies.
A baby is born on a labor table
and it moves up and down like this.
It's a colorful, ugly thing
and it is not shaped like a human being.
It moves up and down like this on a labor table
because that thing is breathing.
That is a baby.
- [John Narrating] In 1982, Darlene married Giff Johnson,
the author of this tribute to his wife.
- Darlene was one of the liveliest,
most entertaining individuals that
I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
She was a voice for the voiceless.
- [John Narrating] Like so many Marshall Islanders,
Darlene died of cancer, age 45.
This is the largest of the islands, Kwajalein,
occupied by one of America's most important
and secretive bases.
Known as the Ronald Reagan Test Site,
it's a missile launch pad that commands
the Pacific Ocean all the way to Asia and China.
(waves crash)
Here, the people of the Marshall Islands
are once again being subjected to the testing
of weapons of mass destruction designed for a coming war.
The base is part of a remarkable plan
known as Vision 2020.
Devised in the 1990's, its aim is described
officially as full-spectrum dominance.
This means control of all land, sea, air,
cyberspace, and space.
- [Radio] Five, four, three, two, one,
ignition.
- [John Narrating] From California, almost 5000 miles away,
the US Air Force tests it's intercontinental missiles
by firing them at the Marshall Islands.
- Imagine a missile coming screaming out of the sky.
It's absolutely terrifying.
I think that there's really nothing that I can imagine
that would be more terrifying than this.
And we're talking about devices that
any one of them could go off course.
- [John Narrating] None of this disturbs life on the base,
where small town America has been recreated,
a wonderland of the suburban good life.
- Thank you.
(upbeat music)
- Fabulous.
There's nothing better than living on a tropical island.
- I pretty much have beachfront property, you know?
It's great, I love it here.
- [John Narrating] Just across the bay is Ebeye Island.
Known as the slum of the Pacific,
more than 12,000 people live here
on a strip of land less than a mile long.
Many of them refugees from what is now the missile base
and from islands poisoned by nuclear testing.
Every day, people from Ebeye are
brought to work on the missile base
to water the gardens and the golf course
then they are ferried back to their poverty.
This is apartheid in the Pacific.
(flies buzz)
- Ebeye needs a lot of things.
Medicine, education, and jobs.
Vegetables and fruits.
- Vegetables and fruits.
- Yes.
- Here we are, it's a tropical island,
and you need vegetables and fruits.
- Yes.
- [John Narrating] Fish, vegetables and fruit
were once abundant on Ebeye.
Today, fish is contaminated by toxic pollutants
says the Environmental Protection Agency.
Now the only food most people can afford
is processed and imported.
They have the highest rate of diabetes in the world.
- When someone gets really ill,
do they go to the hospital over on the base
because they've got a pretty modern clinic over there.
- They don't treat them with medicine.
They just go there for taking the plug and then x-ray.
- So what happens when somebody is seriously ill?
- They cannot do anything.
- The most consistent example given
is the example of the Ronald Reagan Missile Site
and Ebeye next to it.
On the Ronald Reagan Missile Site
is a vivid example of the United States,
golf courses and swimming pools
and all kinds of amenities.
Right next to it is what is called the slum of the Pacific.
- It's a challenge.
Ebeye is in great need right now.
We've talked about infrastructure.
One of the projects the US is working with
our Australian colleagues and with the Asia Development Bank
is a sewer and water project desperately needed for Ebeye.
Ebeye's overcrowded, the schools need repair.
- Actually, the US military did a survey back in the 70's
and found that the sewers didn't work
and the water didn't run and the electricity wasn't there.
It only happened not all that long ago
they found almost exactly the same thing.
Why hasn't that been fixed?
- There's complete agreement that Ebeye should be a priority
and not only because of the current activities
of the Ronald Reagan Space and Missile Defense Site,
but there's also now an additional component
that is providing for global security
and that's the Space Fence Project by the Air Force.
- [John Narrating] Every missile fired
on the Marshall Islands by the US military
costs 100 million dollars each.
This derelict school bus is the only one on Ebeye.
They can't afford to replace it.
- The base is not good for us,
the people of Marshall Islands, we have no need for it.
- [John] It's been used to test missiles
to fire at countries like China.
- Yes, and anywhere else if they want to.
- [John] What would you like to see happen there?
- I want our land back.
(violin music)
- [John Narrating] This is Shanghai,
the historic port on the Yangtze River,
China's greatest city.
I have arranged to meet the American author
James Bradley, whose latest best-selling book
The China Mirage, reveals an extraordinary hidden history
of American power and modern China.
- It was almost illegal for someone like me
to know of Chinese for almost all of American history.
The Chinese came to America to mine gold
and build the railroads and Americans decided
we didn't like the competition,
so in 1882 we had the Chinese Exclusion Acts
which kept the Chinese out of the United States
for about 100 years.
So you have the largest population in the world
that can't come to the United States,
so at just the point we're putting up
the Statue of Liberty saying, we welcome everybody,
we were erecting a wall saying,
we welcome everybody except those Chinese.
- [John Narrating] Fear of a rising China today
is the latest chapter in a history of propaganda
that presented the Chinese as uncouth and infantile.
To western popular and political culture,
the Chinese became the Yellow Peril.
(piano music)
And racial stereotypes bore the constant theme
of fear and threat.
- [Announcer] Boris Karloff as the evil Fu Manchu.
His passion for power twisting his brilliant mind
as he revels in the horrors of human sacrifice and torture.
Behind the mask of Fu Manchu.
- [John Narrating] This caricature of an entire people
concealed another agenda: opium.
For the American elite in the 19th century,
China was a goal mine of drugs.
- Warren Delano,
the grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
was the American opium king of China.
He was the biggest American opium dealer
second to the British.
He welcomed the first American ship into China
to help out with the opium wars.
Much of the east coast of America,
Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton,
were born from opium money.
The American Industrial Revolution
was funded by huge pools of money.
Where did this come from?
It came from illegal drugs
in the biggest market in the world: China.
- Let me get this right.
The grandfather of arguably the most liberal president,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a drug runner.
- Yes sir.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt never made much money in his life.
He had public service jobs that were very lowly paid,
but he had yachts, he had summer homes,
he had mansions in New York City.
The kids went to private schools.
He inherited a fortune from Warren Delano, his father,
who was the American opium king of China.
If you scratch anyone with the name Forbes in their name,
John Forbes Kerry, Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry--
- That's the present Secretary of State.
- Yes sir.
You'll find opium money.
His great-grandfather was an opium dealer.
How big was opium money?
Opium money built the first industrial city
in the United States, Lowell, Massachusetts.
It built the first five railroads in the United States.
Opium money all over the east coast,
but it wasn't talked about.
It was called the China Trade.
And if you go to various museums,
you can see teas and silks exhibited
and they keep quiet about all that big opium money.
- [John Narrating] In the scramble to get opium money,
China was invaded and colonized
by Britain and the other imperial powers.
Foreign armies grabbed whole swaths of China.
This is the American army in Tiananmen Square,
Peking, in 1900.
Great cities like Shanghai were taken over
and declared concessions
and foreigners lived a life of privilege and luxury
amidst terrible poverty imposed on the Chinese.
A resistance known as the Boxer Rebellion
was put down with a savagery.
This rape of China set the tone
for how China was perceived in the West
well into the 20th century.
This is the distinguished historian
Theodore H. White, an advisor to the White House,
speaking in the 1960's.
- Perhaps China is too vast to be governed by mercy.
Yet if Chinese mind craves order,
they must be brought to recognize
they are the biggest factor in the world's disorder.
And we must untangle the madness of their mind.
The most difficult task in the world
is to reach the minds of men who hate you.
- [John Narrating] What White was really complaining about
was the loss of a China that
the imperial West could dominate
and the defeat of General Chiang Kai-Shek,
who with his famously powerful Christian wife,
Mei-ling Soong, guarded America's interests in China.
That is, until they were thrown out in 1949
by a communist revolution led by Mao Zedong.
- Mao had beaten Chiang Kai-Shek three times
in huge battles involving millions of combatants.
Mao was a winner in this contest from
the early 1930's on, but we knew very little about it
and people don't understand that even today.
- [Announcer] Shanghai hears the message clearly
as foreign businessmen board up their shops.
Go now, go quickly, for communism marches.
Take what you can, but flee.
In pell-mell haste, the Western powers
evacuate the city they have built,
for good and bad alike must leave.
The businessmen come for profit
as well as missionaries come to heal
must say goodbye as out the Yancy
steams the last of Western influence
and farewell to a century.
(shouting)
- [John Narrating] Even today, it's difficult to understand
the paranoia ignited by Mao's revolution.
- As we look at China on the map,
we can see that China is the basic cause
of all of our troubles in Asia.
- I believe that for the sake of our safety,
it is necessary to be prepared for the possibility
of a Chinese missile attack on the United States.
- [John Narrating] One of the myths about Mao
is that he was an implacable enemy of the capitalist West.
(chorus singing)
Shanghai today is a prosperous international city
still run by the communists, at least in name.
- When I was last in China more than a generation ago,
the loudest noise was the tinkling of bicycle bells.
Mao had just died, the streets were dark,
the universities were closed.
The chaos of the cultural revolution
had given way to a great silence.
"We're exhausted," was the freest comment I heard.
Coming back, the change is barely comprehensible.
Here in Shanghai, the freedom bears no comparison.
Yes, there are issues with human rights,
especially the right to speak against the state
and challenge its power.
Since I was last here, millions of people
have been lifted out of poverty,
many of them into an entirely new middle class.
This epic is still barely understood in the West,
or should that be willfully misunderstood?
The truth is that China has matched America
at its own great game of capitalism
and that is unforgivable.
- [John Narrating] One measure of China's new capitalism
is the Hurun Rich List.
This league table of China's mega-rich
is published by Rupert Hoogewerf,
an old Etonian whose Chinese name is Hu Run.
He's received many awards,
including China's Man of the Year.
- This year, 2015, has probably been
the most extraordinary year of wealth creation
in the history of China again.
I've been doing this list for 15, 16 years.
I've never seen a year like 2015.
Normally for 200 million pounds or 300 million dollars,
we find say about 800,000 people.
This year, 2015, it's doubled.
There'll be more dollar billionaires known about in China
than in the US.
So the US, up until now,
has been the leader in terms of
the most successful business tycoons in the world.
China 2015, will have overtaken the US.
So, amazing.
- [John Narrating] Modern China is full of telling ironies,
not least this museum that was once the house
where Mao and his comrades secretly founded
the communist party of China in 1921.
Today it stands in the heart of an exclusive,
very capitalist shopping district.
- When you leave this shrine to China's great revolution,
you're confronted by a surreal spectacle.
For right outside where the
Chinese communist party was born,
are the very symbols of capitalism.
Starbucks, Apple, Cartier, Dolce and Gabbana,
and down there perhaps the free market's greatest triumph:
bottled water that insures you live young,
costing six pounds for a small bottle in my hotel.
Would Mao spin in his tomb if he was here?
I'm not so sure.
Hidden history is always the key to the truth.
Five years before his great communist revolution in 1949,
Mao sent this secret message to Washington.
"China must industrialize," wrote Mao,
"this can only be done by free enterprise.
"Chinese and American interests fit together
"economically and politically.
"America need not fear that we will not be cooperative.
"We cannot risk crossing America.
"We cannot risk any conflict."
Mao received no reply.
Nothing has changed.
- Mao Zedong was looking to be a friend
with the United States from the beginning.
Mao says, I will go meet
Franklin Roosevelt in the White House.
Mao reaches out in 1950 to Harry Truman.
He reaches out to Dwight Eisenhower.
His hand was tossed away.
- [John Narrating] This opportunity that
might have changed history,
prevented wars, saved countless lives,
was lost because the truth of Mao's overtures
was denied in the Washington of the 1950's.
State Department officials who had carried Mao's messages
were condemned unjustly as communist traitors.
- Everybody who knew Mao, who spoke Chinese, was gone.
In the 1950's, the State Department
had no employees who spoke Chinese.
It's resulted in us not having relations
with the number one, most populous country in the world.
- [John Narrating] In 1979, this man,
Deng Xaoping, became China's paramount leader.
He said, "Socialism does not mean shared poverty."
This was code for the most radical reform
since Mao's revolution, the return of capitalism to China,
but this time controlled by the communist party.
"To be rich is glorious,"
Deng was reported as saying.
America was now threatened by the emergence
of a vast image of itself.
This is one of the many very exclusive
gated communities in Shanghai
where an apartment is one of the prizes
of the new communism.
I'd arranged to see Professor Zhang Weiwei,
a close aide to the late Deng Xiaoping,
the man who changed China.
- Deng is really, extremely long-term visionary leader
with an exceedingly long-term at strategic vision
for his country and for his people.
China is still following that path.
Actually, this is really a tradition
from China's long history.
You look at even like Mao.
He said we should surpass UK,
by which we should surpass the United States,
so these tradition continues to this day.
Even Xi Jinping to this day is also doing this idea.
Actually, what many Chinese have problem
with the Western media is the stereotypes about China.
If you contend with stereotypes, you miss so many things.
If BBC broadcast something,
they are happy to always mention the communist dictatorship,
this autocracy.
Actually, with this kind of label
you cannot understand this China as it is.
But if you watch BBC or CNN or read Economist
and try to understand China, it will be a failure.
It's impossible.
- Multiple parties fight for political power
and everyone holding on to them
as the only path to salvation
to the long-suffering, developing world.
- [John Narrating] This is Eric Li,
a Shanghai entrepreneur educated in America
and typical of a new, confident,
outspoken political class.
- In China, there are a lot of problems.
But at the moment, the Chinese, the party state,
has proven an extraordinary ability to change.
I make the joke:
in America you can change political parties
but you can't change the policies.
In China you cannot change the party
but you can change policies.
In 65 or 66 years, China has been run by one single party
yet the political changes that have taken place
in China these past 66 years have been wider
and broader and greater than probably
any other major country in modern memory.
- So in that time, China ceased to be communist.
Is that what you're saying?
- Well, China is a market economy.
It's a vibrant market economy
but it is not a capitalist country.
Here's why.
There's no way a group of billionaires
could control the party bureau
as billionaires control American policy making.
So in China, you have a vibrant market economy
but capital does not rise above political authority.
Capital does not have enshrined rights.
In America, capital,
the interest of capital and capital itself
has risen above the American nation.
The political authority cannot check the power of capital.
That's why America is a capitalist country
but China's not.
- [John Narrating] This is the ironic title
of a best-selling book by Zhang Lijia,
a journalist and critic who lives in Beijing.
- Many Americans imagine that the Chinese people
live a miserable, repressed life with no freedom whatsoever.
That's not quite true.
If you speak to many ordinary Chinese people,
they will tell you they feel their lives are quite free.
Some 500 million people have been lifted off poverty
and some would say probably 600 million people.
That's a great achievement.
For many Americans, the Yellow Peril has never left them.
I think there's a fear about China.
There's a fear of China's rapid rise,
but it also has a lot to do with China's
label as a communist state.
- China's objectives are modest
compared with their weight.
They're not trying to run the world.
They're not even trying to run the Asian-Pacific.
I think they want to keep America
from dominating the Asian-Pacific.
So they have what they believe
is their rightful place in the Asian-Pacific,
because of all civilizations
and all the history on their side,
so their objectives are really modest
compared with their capacity.
- The new wealth in China,
they often say this is the product of
self-made entrepreneurial skill but
is it not also the product of
the exploitation of people at the bottom,
what are known in China as migrants.
But they're not really migrants, they're Chinese.
- (laughs) If you really go to
talk to these migrant workers,
you will find quite surprisingly,
over the past five to seven years,
they have experienced a greater income increase
than any other social groups.
China is not a class society.
- [John Narrating] But China is a class society.
These are the homes of migrant workers,
people who build and service the new China.
Here it's not uncommon for three families
to share one tiny flat.
- You know, you associate a socialist country with equality
but unfortunately it seems the reform has started.
China has become one of the
most unequal societies in the world.
The income gap is widening.
Governments, I feel, have retreated some of
the responsibilities, left the markets to take over,
but the market does not always treat women kindly.
Some private companies that would just refuse
to hire child-bearing aged women.
And sometimes when women became pregnant,
they would sack them.
Because they don't want to pay their maternity leave.
And in fact, the income gap has grown much bigger
between men and women.
- Your old boss, Deng Xaoping,
presided over the bloodshed in Tiananmen Square.
What would you say to the survivors of Tiananmen Square,
because so many of those did fight
for what they saw as democratic change in China?
- In 1989, there were two political forces.
One of those were presented by the Chinese students.
Their hero was Mikhail Gorbachev,
who happened to be in Beijing.
Their slogan was,
"Soviet Union's Today is China's Tomorrow."
So the idea was political reform first,
other reform second.
Otherwise, China would be hopeless.
Deng's message was the opposite.
He thought Gorbachev was an idiot.
He thought China must have economic reform first,
other reform second.
This priority must be set clear.
Unfortunately, at that particular moment in 1989,
the two political forces could not reach a compromise.
That's when the tragedy occurred.
- [John Narrating] It was more than a tragedy.
It was a massacre
of which the memory remains a raw presence in modern China.
- Why does the Chinese state still fear the few?
The few who speak out, and I'm thinking of--
- Liu Xiaobo? (laughs)
- [John] Exactly.
This man won the Nobel Peace Prize and he's in prison.
- He violated Chinese law by a big margin.
So actually the freedom of expression,
similar views are aired by many people
but he really going to the extreme.
- [John Narrating] Liu Xiaobo challenged the government
to implement democratic reforms
and he spent a total of 13 years in prison.
- Why can't a confident China
accept a criticism like that?
- Nobel peace committee makes huge mistake.
They owe the Chinese an explanation.
If you cross a line, you violate the constitution,
you violate so many laws, you should be punished.
(somber music)
- [John Narrating] And yet in China today,
the spirit of protest and dissent
lives on in different forms.
In 2015, strikes and community protests
and activism reach record levels.
This resistance is seldom reported in the West.
- So there are lots of protests in China.
Typical for example, land being grabbed by
officials for commercial development
and the farmers are not being compensated properly.
But the farmers now know,
are more aware of their rights so they protest.
Or young workers from the factory,
they demand a better wage and a better working condition,
but many of the protests they are economic driven,
not political driven.
They are regional, not nation-wide.
So this kind of thing is unlikely
to develop into real movement
or so-called, you call that revolution.
- [John] So the Mao's revolution
was the last revolution?
- (laughs) Well, never say never.
(helicopter whirs)
- [John Narrating] The Japanese island of Okinawa
is occupied by 32 military installations.
From here, the United States has attacked Korea,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq.
The sky is full of planes and helicopters.
(helicopter whirs)
Wherever people go, they are fenced in
and told to keep out.
Okinawa is the front line of a beckoning war
with China.
(people shouting)
Aged 87, Fumiko Shimabukuro
is one of the leaders of a non-violent resistance
that's challenging Washington's "Pivot to Asia."
(people shouting)
- [John Narrating] Fumiko is a survivor.
A quarter of the civilians on the island
were killed in the American invasion in 1945
and a fear of war has been passed through the generations.
(gentle music)
Today, those who witnessed these horrors
live in a place of extraordinary beauty
surrounded by coral reefs and a unique marine life.
It was here in Henoko Bay
that the survivors of World War Two sought refuge
and it's this they're now fighting to save.
It's an epic struggle that pits these island people
against the greatest military power on Earth.
- This is the office of a former governor of Okinawa,
Ota Masahide.
What is done is create not so much a museum,
but an appeal to the outside world
to understand the resistance in Okinawa,
to understand the suffering,
to read its hidden history.
It begins in 1945 when the Americans invaded.
Here's General MacArthur arriving in Okinawa.
A second invasion happened 10 years later
in what became known as
the Bulldozer's and Bayonets campaign.
American forces seized prime agricultural land,
burned farm houses, and killed livestock.
The dispossessed people of Okinawa
march the length of Japan, appealing for help.
- This wall is devoted to a resistance in Okinawa
that never ceases.
Everywhere people go on the island,
they are confronted by this sign.
It tells them they must not go past
this fence topped with barbed wire.
These fences run like great ribbons across the island
and the bases themselves cut swaths across Okinawa.
But all around them are people
with this continuing demonstration,
this continuing resistance.
And they have a message.
It's: "People of the World,
"Watch what Japan and the US are doing.
"Don't let them force the bases on Okinawa."
- [John Narrating] All this will be lost
when much of the bay becomes
concrete runways for bombers at Camp Schwab,
the huge US Marine base behind this fence.
(applause)
In 2014, Okinawa elected a new governor,
Takeshi Onaga, who won by a landslide on one issue.
Stopping the new base at Henoko.
This was election night outside the American base
at Camp Schwab.
(cheering)
♪ We shall overcome ♪
♪ We shall overcome someday ♪
♪ Oh, deep in my heart ♪
♪ I do believe ♪
♪ We shall overcome someday ♪
The New Year's celebration of their victory
was bittersweet.
The government in Tokyo resented this
unprecedented challenge to its authority.
The issue is now in the Japanese courts.
Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe,
has also made clear that with the backing
of his powerful patron America,
he wants to reawaken Japanese nationalism
and reclaim it's military power.
(helicopter whirs)
(drum pounds)
(singing)
While we were filming this ceremony outside the base,
on a day when people paid respect
to their departed loved ones,
giant American helicopters circled above us,
intimidating as always.
The threat of these low-flying aircraft
is a constant presence in Okinawa.
Teachers often can't teach because of the noise
and the fear.
(somber music)
This was the carnage when an American fighter
crashed into a primary school
after the pilot had ejected to safety.
Haru Akira, aged seven, was terribly burned.
Akira suffered throughout his youth
and died from his injuries age 21.
Another tragedy waits to happen on Okinawa.
US military aircraft have been involved
in 44 accidents on the island.
The latest threat is this hybrid plane, the Osprey,
notorious for its safety issues.
(dance music)
Wherever the military is based in Asia,
there is a relationship with local people,
especially women, that often breeds resentment.
In Okinawa, this resentment ignited a riot in 1970.
Scores of American GI's were pulled from their cars
which were set alight.
For Washington and it's compliant ally in Tokyo,
it's this kind of insurrection that they fear.
During the making of this film,
a young woman was raped and murdered,
allegedly by an American military contractor
from one of the bases.
(chanting)
It was the latest of thousands of cases of violence
and it brought massive crowds into the streets,
demanding an end to the
military occupation of their country.
(aircraft rumbles)
This is a Mace missile,
designed to carry a nuclear warhead.
During the Cold War, the United States
secretly installed nuclear weapons
at this launch pad in Okinawa.
Most of them were aimed at China.
Today, the nuclear missile site
is run by a Buddhist organization,
the Soka Gakkai, as a peace museum.
- In 1962, the atomic weapons,
that were on the missile,
was almost launched.
- They were almost launched?
- Yeah, according to the spokesman of this military base,
said they were ordered to prepare.
Then we received second order to stop it.
- [John Narrating] One of the American servicemen
whose job was to fire the Mace missiles
has since revealed that China was a nuclear target
during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
- We were told that we had to launch all the missiles.
But we only had one missile headed towards Russia
and we did not see why we
should have to involve the other countries.
The captain suggested that everybody crack the doors open
so it would take less time to launch the missile
if the doors were cracked open.
(beeping)
- [John Narrating] One of the launch crews
was on the point of firing their missiles
when a duty officer suspected the order was false.
- The officer that was on the B side
was told to send two men over there with 45's
and to shoot anybody that tried to launch
until the situation was resolved.
And it would only take like 15, 20 seconds
to run the distance between the two command centers.
So those two men kept that whole crew at bay
while we made a decision as what to do.
And it wasn't very long, maybe two or three seconds later
where a very nervous major came over the intercom
issuing the stand down order.
And then we just kind of looked at each other, like
we could have exterminated the whole planet.
The major who had given the launch order
was quietly court-martialed
and dismissed from the Air Force.
- That morning is just as familiar to me
and as clear as yesterday morning is.
And this is 53 years later
and how clear blue the sky was
and there was just some very light clouds
and there was a perfect breeze blowing
at the perfect temperature.
I did not know what the temperature was,
but it just felt perfect.
And we were all just kind of taking it in
and taking in the smell of the air
and the sea and the land mixture together
and everything smelled so beautiful.
- This is very interesting because it shows
the cities in China where these Mace missiles were aimed at.
Which ones do we have here?
- This Okinawa Island.
So within 2000 kilometers you find Peking, or Beijing,
Xi'an, Jiuzhaigou, Hong Kong, Shanghai,
Taiwan and Taipei, and Pyongyang, North Korea.
Within the range of missile.
(aircraft rumbles)
(somber music)
- [John Narrating] This is the work of
the Okinawan sculptor, Kinjo Minoru.
It's a tribute to the suffering and resistance
of the people of this island.
More than 1000 miles away on the Korean island of Jeju,
these symbols of struggle are hauntingly similar.
The work of Korean sculptor Koh Gil-chun,
represents another fight of island people for freedom.
(gentle music)
A semi-tropical sanctuary of unusual beauty,
Jeju Island is a world heritage site.
The government of South Korea declared it
an island of world peace.
But on this island of peace has been built
one of the most provocative military bases in the world,
less than 400 miles from Shanghai.
Like Okinawa and the Marshall Islands,
this is America's frontline in it's so-called
"Pivot to Asia."
Here in once unspoiled Gangjeong Village,
the South Korean Navy has built a base
for American aircraft carriers,
nuclear submarines, and destroyers
equipped with the Aegis ballistic missile
aimed at China's defenses.
China's lifelines to the world in oil, trade, resources,
depend on shipping that comes through
chokepoints like this.
- The US pivot into the Asian-Pacific
is really intended to create the ability
to put a loaded gun to the head of China
and say, you will do as we say
otherwise we will be able to restrict.
We'll be able to shut down, choke off
your importation of oil and other resources.
(chanting)
- [John Narrating] For nine years, every day,
often twice a day, these Catholic priests
have staged a mass that blocked the gates
of the new military base on Jeju Island.
(singing)
In a country where political demonstrations
can be easily banned, unlike powerful religions,
the tactic has produced this spectacle of resistance.
(man speaking on loudspeaker)
(speaks foreign language)
Father Mun Jeong-hyeon has led the fight
to stop the base being built
and several times suffered serious injuries.
(singing)
- I sing four songs everyday.
Before the Mass, during the Mass, at the end of the Mass
and the end of the rosary.
The content of song is very beautiful.
The writer and composer is the musician
from this island.
I love him very much and he gave me their song
which I practiced and I became a master
to sing that song because I practice everyday. (laughs)
- [John] You sing it with such passion.
(singing)
- Sometimes we just wait.
Typhoon, typhoon strike!
- [John] Do you sing then?
Do you have a Mass when the typhoons strike?
- Oh yes.
No exceptions.
- [John] What will happen
if this base becomes operational?
- They have destroyed the environment,
they destroy the life of all of us.
We should be witness of their oppression and violence.
- [John] Why do they do it?
- They'd like to rule the Pacific area, the whole area.
They'd like to make China isolated in this globe.
The US government want to be in power of this world.
(laughs)
- [John Narrating] Meanwhile, a Quaker called Mr. Oh
joins them with his own ritual of protest,
accompanied by an artist called Wild Flower.
- [John Narrating] This is the center of an empire
that never speaks its name,
whose power is represented in this extraordinary world map
of American military bases.
4000 bases in the United States,
almost 1000 bases spread across every continent.
- The archipelago of empire,
the bases that we have around the world
hidden in plain sight are the real territory of our empire
but at the same time we maintain independent governments
in Japan or South Korea or Germany.
They don't have autonomy when it comes to foreign policy.
So it's a very sophisticated and effective system
whereby we pat ourselves on the back for
helping to midwife democracy in Japan
and Germany and South Korea and various other places
while keeping the lid on in that we don't know
what these countries would do if they were
fully independent.
And the beauty of this system is that
most people pay no attention to it at all.
They think it's just a natural occurrence
to have 50,000 American troops in Japan.
- There's no country that has better anti-imperial credit--
(laughs) cred, then the United States.
And we are not trying to recreate
the glories of the British Empire.
We're arguing that the world is round.
We have a global policy
and all nations have global rights.
- No ocean has ever been dominated
the way the US dominates the Pacific, Navy and Air Force.
They claim that in the Pearl Harbor headquarters
of the Pacific Command, they claim to be responsible
for 52 percent of the Earth's surface.
And when you look at their logo,
it shows an eagle over the Aleutian Islands
with one tail coming down somewhere near Seattle
and the other coming down right over Beijing.
So Beijing looks at a network of bases,
a real archipelago of empire
that's been built up since the Korean War.
- You have had and still have
an arc of bases that start in Australia
and go through the Pacific--
- No.
We have no bases in Australia.
- You have Pine Gap, you have Darwin--
- No.
- And you have a new facility in Western Australia.
- No, to speak precisely,
we have no military bases in Australia.
What we do is is operate with and in Australian bases.
But we're not in the basing business nowadays.
- There's a growing collection of what are referred to as
"lilypad bases."
These are bases that have typically two, 300 troops,
no family members, very few amenities,
and they are often quite secretive.
They are bases that are frequently constructed
within a foreign country's base to disguise it
and generally are not referred to as bases.
- [John Narrating] Many of these bases have been set up
to combat China's worldwide economic influence.
From these bases, the United States operates a secret army
in 147 countries.
- If you're gonna be a free country
rather than give in to every gangster regime in the world,
you're gonna have to take a risk.
'Cause the gangsters, they want to eliminate
good people in the world so they can--
and in China, they want to dominate all of the Far East,
they want to dominate.
Just like Japan wanted to before World War Two.
Their goal was to dominate that part of the world.
Today, because there's been no political reform in Beijing,
these guys want to dominate a huge chunk of the planet.
(mumbles)
- [John Narrating] Andrew Krepinevich served on
America's National Defense Panel.
He's a military strategist and war planner.
- You've written that airstrikes and naval blockades
have a role to play in punishing China.
You've described the need for sea mines.
You've described the need for special forces,
US Special Forces, and missiles placed on islands.
This sounds like a preparation for war.
- Our first president, George Washington,
said that if you want peace, prepare for war.
And essentially what the United States is doing again
is responding to provocative behavior on the part of China.
And just as we did in the Cold War,
the idea was to have a position of military strength
such that your adversaries were not tempted
to act in aggressive ways or
try and employ coercion to get their way.
- Just last week the US Navy sent a guided missile destroyer
into the Spratly Islands, the South China Sea.
And what was different about this, I think,
was that Chinese fighters scrambled.
That sounds like an escalator.
- Well again, from an American prospective,
the escalation was that the Chinese
beginning to militarize these islands in the first place,
moving its military capabilities down into that region,
engaging in provocative behavior against
the commercial activities and military forces of
other minor countries in the region
that have claim to those islands.
So it's a response to Chinese intimidation rather--
- Excuse me, how is commerce being intimidated
in the South China Sea?
- There have been no military forces,
no military bases there.
The Chinese--
- Except the United States military base.
- Not in the South China Sea.
Not even in the Philippines because
the United States withdrew its forces in the Philippines.
- But the United States is back in the Philippines.
- The Philippines and the United States have announced
five different locations scattered all throughout
the Philippines where US troops will
be stationed on a rotational basis.
- [John Narrating] This threat to China from yet more
US bases on its doorstep was not an issue
when an arbitration tribunal ruled against China's claims
to the strategic Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
In 2015, the US Navy rehearsed a blockade
that would cut China's lifelines of oil
and trade and raw materials.
The danger of confrontation grows by the day.
- The US Navy is on the doorstep of China
regardless of disputed islands
and is there with low-draft ships,
planes, battle groups.
It's right on the doorsteps.
What of Chinese ships?
What if the equivalent was off California?
- Well John, we ask ourselves that question regularly.
And it's important to put yourself in the other guy's shoes.
So look.
We don't operate in the Pacific in an effort
to scare China, to contain China, to backfoot China.
Our operations and our presence,
first of all, is warmly welcomed by the vast majority
of the coastal states, but secondly,
is fully accepted by the Chinese.
Time after time--
- Excuse me, is it fully accepted?
- Yes, by their words.
The Chinese leaders--
- [John] My impression is that they're scared.
- [John Narrating] And this is what they're scared of.
A noose of bases right around China.
Missiles, bombers, drones, warships.
A provocation of war.
- Today, I state clearly and with conviction.
America's commitment to seek the peace and security
of a world without nuclear weapons.
(cheering)
- [John Narrating] Under Obama,
nuclear warhead spending has risen higher
than under any president since the end of the Cold War.
- It's all a magician's show because
at the same time that Obama is talking about that,
not only is he spending a trillion dollars
to modernize US nuclear forces,
but he's deploying these missile defense systems
to encircle Russia and China,
which makes it impossible to
get rid of nuclear weapons in that climate.
- Everybody wants to look like they're tough.
See, I gotta be tough.
I'm not afraid of doing anything military.
I'm not afraid of threatening.
I'm a hairy-chested gorilla.
And you don't want to look like you're weak,
so what you do is you talk more and more aggressively
and if you don't want to do it yourself,
because you maybe think it doesn't look very presidential,
you let somebody under you do the talking.
And the United States has gotten into a situation
where there's a lot of military saber-rattling
and it's really being orchestrated from the top.
- Yeah, that seems incredibly dangerous, all of this.
- That's an understatement, I think, but I agree.
- When you routinely plan for mass murder,
you become conditioned to it.
That's what this is.
We accept it.
Oh yeah, we have nuclear weapons.
- The Defense Secretary has just announced
that there will be warships and special forces
and planes sent to the Philippines
and the Wall Street Journal has described this as
"the vanguard of a major US presence in Southeast Asia."
That sounds like--
- Where does this end?
What's the purpose?
I mean, where are we going to stop this process
before it starts a war?
And then if the war starts, where does that end?
♪ America, America ♪
♪ God shed his grace on me ♪
♪ And crown thy good with brotherhood ♪
♪ From sea to shining sea ♪
(wind howls)
The scientific studies that I teach by the scientists
that predict that the Earth can be made
essentially uninhabitable from nuclear war,
the scientists have been begging the Obama administration--
well, they wouldn't say begging.
But they have made multiple requests
to meet with them and discuss these predictions
because they're peer-reviewed studies
and they've been turned down over and over again.
They've been peripherally told that,
well we don't think the long-term
environmental consequences of nuclear war
are all that important if the immediate effects
of nuclear war don't stop it.
That the long-term environmental consequences of nuclear war
are liable to wipe out the human race.
- [John] In one exchange,
nuclear exchange between the US and China,
what could be the consequences?
- Well let me just give you an example
of what one Chinese four or five megaton warhead
would do to a city in the United States if it got through.
The detonation of that weapon over a city
would instantly ignite about
six or 700 square miles on fire.
And within 20 to 30 minutes,
all of those fires would coalesce
into a single gigantic firestorm.
There would be no escape from it.
So all the people there would perish.
So the US, with say,
hundreds of nuclear weapons on Chinese cities.
When you combine all the smoke
from these nuclear weapons detonating,
it actually creates millions of tons of smoke.
Black carbon smoke that'll rise above cloud level
into the stratosphere, it's heated by the sun,
it acts like a solar collector.
And that smoke, because of that,
will stay there for 10 years or longer.
And what the smoke does is it blocks
warming sunlight from reaching the surface of the earth
and it becomes so cold in a matter of just a couple of weeks
that the temperature will fall below freezing
every day for one to three years.
And it will become too cold to grow food crops
for at least 10 years or longer.
(wind howls)
- I mean, there's a total disconnect
with the changing world.
You have a giant rising power, in this case, China.
Why would you expect a giant rising power
to not want to have more control over its destiny?
What we should be doing in my view
is trying to cultivate a sense of friendship and cooperation
and we can have our differences with them.
If we think they're doing something in trade
that we don't like, let's have it out with them.
But this saber-rattling is
the worst thing we can possibly do.
(cheering)
- It is time to show the whole world
that America is back.
Bigger, and better, and stronger than ever before.
We don't have victories anymore.
We used to have victories, but we don't have 'em.
When was the last time anybody saw us beating,
let's say China?
In a trade deal, they kill us.
We can't continue to allow China
to rape our country, and that's what they're doing.
It's the greatest theft in the history of the world.
(audience cheers)
- [John Narrating] The new president, Donald Trump,
has a problem with China.
The urgent question now is,
will Trump continue with the provocations
revealed in this film and take us all to the edge of war?
- There never have been two countries
more interdependent on each other
than China and the US in history.
And China is the largest trading nation
in the world and in history.
So China's economy and their societies, their lives,
are linked to the entire world.
Including America and the West and all the other countries.
So I think interdependence between these two countries
and among all the nations of the world,
speak to peace.
(gentle music)
- [John Narrating] We don't have to accept the word
of those who conjure up threats and false enemies
to justify the business and profit of war
if we recognize there is another superpower,
and that's us.
Ordinary people everywhere, like the people of Okinawa,
Jeju Island, the Marshall Islands,
China, the United States.
By speaking out, they deliver a warning to all of us.
Can we really afford to be silent?
♪ We'll meet again ♪
♪ Don't know where, don't know when ♪
♪ But I know we'll meet again ♪
♪ Some sunny day ♪
♪ Keep smiling through ♪
♪ Just like you always do ♪
♪ 'Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds ♪
♪ Far away ♪
♪ So will you please say hello ♪
♪ To the folks that I know ♪
♪ Tell them I won't be long ♪
♪ They'll be happy to know ♪
♪ That as you saw me go ♪
♪ I was singing this song ♪
♪ We'll meet again ♪
♪ Don't know where ♪
♪ Don't know when ♪
♪ But I know we'll meet again ♪
♪ Some sunny day ♪
♪ We'll meet again ♪
♪ Don't know where ♪
♪ Don't know when ♪
♪ But I know we'll meet again ♪
♪ Some sunny day ♪
♪ Keep smiling through ♪
♪ Just like you always do ♪
♪ 'Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away ♪
♪ So will you please say hello ♪
♪ To the folks that I know ♪
♪ Tell them I won't be long ♪
♪ They'll be happy to know ♪
♪ That as you saw me go ♪
♪ I was singing this song ♪
♪ We'll meet again ♪
♪ Don't know where ♪
♪ Don't know when ♪
♪ But I know we'll meet again ♪
♪ Some sunny day ♪