Friday, April 10, 2015

Watch "Under the Dome", the best ever documentary on China's air pollution

Closely connected with the topic of my last post, I now bring you "Under the Dome" (穹顶之下), the groundbreaking documentary on China's air pollution by Chai Jing. Rather similar in style to Al Gore's "an inconvenient truth", it gives you some of the frightening facts about the country's air pollution in an accessible fashion.

After its release, "Under the Dome" got over 100 million views in a single weekend on China's main video-sharing websites, and sales of air purifiers shot up as a result. Although it was obviously made with the cooperation of some government departments and was initially praised by the Minister of Environment, after about a week the video was taken down from all Chinese websites by decree, meaning that most Chinese no longer have easy access to it.

Here is a YouTube version with English subtitles: