General Discussion - BBC documentary: China's Capitalist Revolution

For those of you that missed it in the UK, there was a brilliant documentary on BBC2 earlier tonight on Deng Xiaoping's reforms during the 80s. It tells the a gripping tale of the path that China took to opening up its economy, with plenty of anecdotes (e.g. the novelty of synthetic t-shirts), how people made a lot of money, but also how the changes created social unrest through corruption, inflation and unemployment. It places 1989 in context (not the simple pro-democracy Western media view), and how Deng Xiaoping struggled to prevent his reforms being undone in the aftermath of the disaster. I found it absolutely fascinating, and has plenty of interviews with people who were around at the time (so lots of advanced Chinese practise!)

Watch it on iPlayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lfcz6/Chinas_Capitalist_Revolution/