China Hails, Then Bans a Documentary

It was no surprise that the Chinese government banned the environmental documentary Under the Dome, by Chai Jing, a well-known former television reporter. The surprise is that it took the authorities so long to do it. The film, which exposes the tremendous damage China’s heavy industry has done to the environment, and the powerlessness of the Ministry of Environmental Protection to enforce antipollution laws, attracted 200 million viewers in the week after it was released on the Internet for free on Feb. 28. Environment officials at first praised Chai’s chilling account, and state-owned media said the film was a wake-up call.

On March 7, Under the Dome disappeared from the Chinese Web. It was abruptly removed from file-sharing sites, and references to the film in state-run media ceased. Chai “really pointed fingers at the lack of regulatory enforcement on the government’s part,” says Hao Wu, a Chinese filmmaker who’s a fellow at the Washington-based New America Foundation. “It was confrontational and cathartic. She was able to do what we cannot do: Go to government and say, ‘Here’s what you have done wrong.’ ”