China's Lahu minority has for centuries lived in the Yunnan hills bordering Burma. The hills have kept the Lahu safe and secluded but also poor and malnourished. Now forty-six ten-year old Lahu girls are sent to an elite Chinese primary school where they will learn to speak Chinese and enter mainstream Chinese society. Can the girls do well at the school yet maintain their cultural identity?
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We follow labor researcher Zhang Yaozu as he visits laid-off workers in northeast China, once the nation's industrial hub and now due to the privatization of state-owned enterprises called China's Rust Belt.
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The Lao Gai are the largest gulags of our times, providing the slave labour helping to propel China's economy. Rare images smuggled out reveal the brutal conditions inside the camps.
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In the past six years, infant birth defects in China have increased by an unprecedented 40%. This rise is being blamed on pollution from factories. Now green campaigners are taking on the multinationals.
"The untreated waste is pumped out secretly at night", states activist Wu Deng Ming, pointing at a water outlet leading from a factory into a river. "People living along the river have enlarged livers", claims one local. They suffer from: "loss of appetite or cancer and all sorts of terminal diseases". Although strong laws governing pollution exist, these are regularly flouted. "Some local officials give protection to polluters", claims Ma Jun. In an attempt to put pressure on polluters, campaigners are naming and shaming guilty companies online. "We let people know that this company, with such a popular brand, is violated waste water discharge standards". There are also signs that central government is taking the problem more seriously. "The state is very serious about environmental problems", states official Zhou Linbo. Some factories have been closed down. But strong resistance to change still exists. "Polluting factories hire hooligans to deal with people they believe will damage their reputation", claims Wu Deng Ming. Other companies threaten to relocate to Vietnam or Indonesia where; "we can still discharge more of less freely".
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The President of Taiwan's stubborn push for independence has made him China's Public Enemy Number One. But how likely are these tensions to escalate into a military conflict?
"The world cannot sit by idly to see an undemocratic China remove the freedom, democracy and rights of Taiwan's citizens," laments President Chen Shui-Bian. But despite his best efforts, Taiwan's international support is dwindling. Only 25 countries still have diplomatic ties with it. Everyone else recognises mainland China. And since Chen came to power, China has stepped up its rhetoric, making it clear it will attack if it feels Taiwan is moving towards a formal declaration of independence. "As everyone knows, Taiwan is an inseparable part of the Chinese territory," states one Chinese commander. "The task of our military is to defend the motherland and to ensure its territorial integrity." President Chen's problems are further compounded by the deep political divides in Taiwan. Only half the country considers him their legitimate leader. The others believe he is a crook who staged a mysterious shooting the day before the elections, when he was trailing badly, to boost his support. And much as the Taiwanese tend to see themselves as a sovereign country, few want to go to war over it. After all, as one woman says, "Mainland China is so big and we are so small."
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Chinese Director Weijun Chen's charming film takes us into the world of Chinese schoolchildren, learning about democracy for the first time as they try to vote for their class monitor.
Elections are pretty uncommon in China, so when the children in a school in Wuhan, Central China are presented with the chance to choose their own class monitor they don't quite know what to make of it. It doesn't take them long to get into the swing of it, though, and soon all sorts of dirty tricks are going on. Urged on by their parents, the candidates launch elaborate campaigns of bribery and coercion.
After tantrums and tears, it's finally time for the vote, and who will win - the sweet girl who woos her voters with her flute playing, the bully who beats his classmates, or the boy who has the best sweets.
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China's controversial one child policy has stemmed population growth but at what cost? From forced abortions to heavy fines, many have suffered.
"If people tried to have a second child and didn't have any money, they'd have their house pulled down," complains Liu Shuling. She attracted the wrath of local officials and was heavily fined when she became pregnant a second time. "It was very hard," she recalls. "Fortunately, we didn't starve to death." For the past twenty-five years, controlling population growth has been a major priority for the Chinese government. "Unless there is a containment of population, there will be no economic growth, no social stability or social harmony," explains official Siri Tellier. But there's real concern that this policy has created a generation of spoilt children. "They are very delicate. They can't cope with setbacks," states teacher Sun Kaiyun. Demographic growth may have been stemmed but new population problems have been created. The preference for boys has led to millions of female foetuses being aborted. Now, tens of millions of Chinese men face a future with no prospect of a female partner. And that could create the social unrest the one child policy was supposed to avoid.
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You've heard about China's Cultural Revolution and its sizzling Economic Revolution. But you haven't heard about its other great social upheaval - the Chinese Sexual Revolution - and like everything in that country it's happening at warp speed.
It's China's version of the 60s revolution - on steroids.
China's Sexual Revolution is the world's first glimpse - often using secret cameras - into this forbidden new China. It's a surprising portrait of the Chinese today: the new free love generation that's left their parents in shock; the booming sex industry that's creating an HIV crisis; the new generation of career women and feminists that suddenly wants it all - while millions of men feel left out.
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Documentary about one of the most epic military expeditions ever. Surrounded by hostile armies, Mao Zedong's 87,000-strong Communist Red Army escaped and traveled nearly 6,000 miles on foot, in just one year. Their suffering was huge, and their casualties immense, but in an extraordinary feat of endurance, and despite repeated attacks, they preserved and re-established themselves as a fighting force. For the first time, the survivors tell their incredible stories.
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When it won the Olympic bid, China promised to improve its human rights record. Instead, as this week's Unreported World reveals, things have got worse. In a world exclusive, Reporter Aidan Hartley and Producer Andrew Carter film inside one of Beijing's 'black jails' - which the authorities deny exist - and with ordinary people suffering the consequences of fighting eviction to make way for Olympic infrastructure.
China has spent £19 billion on the Olympic sites, but this figure represents a fraction of the money that has gone into one of the swiftest and most radical urban redevelopment schemes in all of human history. Some 5,000 old neighbourhoods, or hutongs, have been bulldozed to make way for avenues of high rises and up to 1.5 million people have been forcibly relocated. Although many are happy to receive compensation and relocation to new apartments, the eviction packages are not negotiable and many who refuse to move have suffered terrible consequences.
Everywhere the team travels in Beijing they meet desperate and angry ordinary Chinese, many of them elderly, who have been beaten, threatened and intimidated by developers and government officials who warn: 'The sooner you leave the more you win, the longer you leave it the worse you will suffer'.
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Dan Rather visits with the Dalai Lama. The man who calls himself "just a simple monk" tells us the Chinese, who exiled him decades ago, lack the moral authority to become a super power.
More than in any other country, coal is the lifeblood of China's booming economy. Coal-fired power plants provide 70 percent of the country's electricity, and more than 30,000 mines operate throughout the country -- about 20 percent of which are illegal and, thus, unregulated.
China is also the most dangerous place in the world to be a coal miner. On average, 13 people a day die in mine accidents there, and more than 80 percent of mining deaths worldwide happen in China.
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China's sky-rocketing growth and shortage of sufficient resources is forcing China to set its sights outside its borders in a frantic search for oil, but the major oil-producing countries are kept off-limits by the United States, forcing China to do business with the rogue states, African dictatorships, Iran and former Russian states - to get the oil they desperately need. Featuring field encounters, archival footage, news reports and maps to outline the latest threat in world geopolitics.
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As world leaders meet for another round of global warming talks, the focus is likely to be on big polluters like China. The country has recently become the world's biggest CO2 emitter.
Currently, 80% of China's energy comes from coal. Mindful of the pollution these power stations generate, the government is investing billions in renewable energy. "China is probably going to be the world's number one renewable energy country", predicts businessman Mark Kelleher. By 2020, 16% of the country's energy must come from renewable sources. Much of this will be generated by wind farms. "This area has really developed since the wind power station was built", enthuses one local. "When the wind power station came, people got jobs".
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In 1997 the British handed the island state of Hong Kong back to China. But we probably don't remember that two years later in 1999, the Portuguese also handed back their former colony of Macau - a typhoon-ridden dot, 50 minutes by ferry from Hong Kong, with no arable land, not even rice paddies, fewer than 500,000 people and less than a sixth the size of Washington D.C.
But now the financial press reports that Macau has actually overtaken the famous Las Vegas strip in the US as the biggest casino magnet in the world.
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China, a superpower emerging at breakneck speed. It's the holy grail for risk taking entrepreneurs. Everyday, hundreds of English businessmen arrive full of hope and expectation. It's a land of opportunity, a place where dreams can come true. This is the story of three men on a mission to make their millions in China.
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Toiling for survival in the mines of Africa, even children are forced to work here. And behind this boom, the Chinese. China needs Africa's Copper and Cobalt to feed its fast growing economy. The Chinese bring work and money, but it all comes at a tragic human cost.
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Documentary offering a portrait of Mao Tse-Tung, one of the 20th century's most controversial leaders. Author and former BBC correspondent Philip Short looks at Mao's life from his childhood and rise to power to his death in 1976. The programme examines the legacy of Mao's rule of China and features exclusive interviews with some of Mao's inner circle, as well as dramatic unseen footage from the period of the cultural revolution.
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The Chinese have come up with a unique way of reforming naughty children or bad students. They're sent to 'walking school' and forced to march up to 800 km across the country.
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The Death Penalty in China is increasingly prescribed as a panacea for social ills. Prisoners with death sentences are paraded through the streets with placards advertising their crimes. We profile Muslims, Christians and artists who have suffered discrimination, intimidation and torture. Tang Boqiao fled after the Tiananmen Square massacre. A former PSB (Public Security Bureau) officer reveals that many policemen use electric batons to inflict maximum misery. In court, lawyers have inadequate time to prepare a defence for their clients. A lawyer speaks out against a legal system with a conviction rate of well over 90%. While foreign companies enjoy cheap labour, Chinese workers have few civil rights. If they complain, they are dispatched to bleak labour camps where they undergo 're-education'. Even foreign businessmen are vulnerable. James Peng was sentenced to 17 years after he argued with his Chinese partner. His fate highlights the dangers of dealing with a country that has little respect for individual life.
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Rapid economic development and population growth are putting severe pressure on water resources in the People's Republic of China. This DVD features Shanghai, Gansu Province, and the Yellow River basin as models of PRC's commitment to developing its water sector. Investments in rural and urban water services and in river basin management are underway.
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In one of the few times in its 5,000-year history, the oldest, most populous nation on earth has opened its doors to the rest of the world. Coupling insightful storytelling with spectacular and groundbreaking photographic techniques, Discovery Atlas: China Revealed brings to life the fascinating and complex contemporary life of this extraordinary country. In today's China, the economics of feudalism and communism are out, while capitalism is in... with a Chinese twist. Old walls are being torn down, and a futuristic landscape of glass and steel is shooting up in their place.
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Younger Tibetans are becoming increasingly frustrated by the Dalai Lama's message of peaceful resistance. They believe it brings them no closer to freeing their homeland.
"I'm calling upon Tibetans to go inside China and sabotage their economic structure," proclaims campaigner Lhasang Tsering. "If we don't struggle for independence, the Chinese won't give us our freedom." Like many, she's angered by the Dalai Lama's policy of pursuing autonomy not independence. Taking inspiration from the Khampa Warriors, Tibetan fighters who battled the Chinese, younger campaigners are switching to more militant tactics. As one states: "After the US occupied Iraq, the people rose up. Do we have to do this? That's what we have to think about."
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Problems with quality control in China have resulted in unsafe products being imported all over the world. CNN's John Vause special exposes medicine from China that kills, lack of control over product quality and problems with Chinese imports in Europe and the US. 60% of recalls in the US are products made in China.
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Mardi Gras: Made in China follows the "bead trail" from the factory in China to Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras, poignantly exposing the inequities of globalization. First-time director David Redmon cleverly illuminates the clash of cultures by juxtaposing American excess and consumer culture against the harsh life of the Chinese factory worker.
The film confronts both cultural and economic globalism by humanizing the commodity chain from China to the United States. Redmon follows the stories of four teenage women workers in the largest Mardi Gras bead factory in the world, providing insights into their economic realities, self-sacrifice, and dreams of a better life, and the severe discipline imposed by living and working in a factory compound.
