Worrying about China: storytelling, humanitarian intervention and the global circulation of independent Chinese documentary

Abstract

This article explores the impact of cross-border collaboration on independent Chinese documentary. Through a study of Wang Jiuliang’s Plastic China, I argue that the film, which passed through training events run by CNEX and the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Programme in China, bears the formal impact of the industrial-humanitarian logic central to these workshops: character-driven storytelling as the key to generating a global Anglophone public for independent Chinese documentary. Tracing this logic through the workshop mechanism, the film’s form, and audience reactions to its screening in the UK, I suggest the result is a viewer response privileging personal action over structural critique—what in this context I term “worrying about China.” This allows me to locate the documentary in relation to broader liberal arguments over China’s place in the world system and assess the limitations of this approach to “going global” for independent Chinese documentary.