Portrait of China’s Army

Press, 5 December 1989, Page 14

Portrait of China’s Army

Just before this year’s tragic June 4 massacre of Chinese students and workers in Tiananmen Square, Australian television crews wrapped up seven months of filming the secretive People’s Liberation Army (P.L.A.)

The result is a four-part series, “The Great Wall of Iron” — the soldiers’ name for the P.L.A. Never before have Westerners been given such access to the world’s second-largest military force. American, British and Japanese film companies’ plans for a similar project were rejected by the Chinese authorities. The People’s Liberation army has always been strictly off limits to foreigners. The opening came at a time when the Chinese authorities were planning to celebrate, in October 1989, the 40th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Harold Weldon, an Australian freelance researcher, had been negotiating for permission to make a feature the P.L.A.

The Chinese President, Yang Shangkun, thought the project was timely, and gave his full authorisation for an Australian film crew to be given every assistance and access to previously forbidden territory. Philip Sherry narrates and presents “The Great Wall of Iron,’’which begins tonight at 8.30

on Three. The series takes viewers from the desolate icy regions of the Russian border, to the jungles of Vietnam; from the roof of the world in Tibet, to military academies, tank units and missile factories. The film crews visited 160 locations, 60 of them designated “closed areas” until now.

Rare film from Chinese archives, most of it never seen before in the West, shows the People’s Liberation Army emerging as a ragged peasant guerrilla army in the 19305.

There is dramatic film of the epic Long March in 1935, when the encircled Red Army broke out and marched an incredible 10,000 km to sanctuary innorthern China. One hundred thousandmen and women set out on the Long March, but only 8000 survived the daily battles, and the extremes of climate and starvation.

The researchers were given access to film footage of the Japanese occupation, the Korean War, the P.L.A.’s incursions into India in 1962, and Vietnam in 1979. Michael Caulfield, the executive producer with Beyond International Group, describes their approach to filming: “We saw it as a human story, not a political one. We had no intention of being needlessly critical of the Chinese, but at the same time we were careful of not being used as a propaganda tool.” “Theirs is a unique army of

extraordinary size, covering a range of activities armies in other countries simply don’t even begin to think about. The sheer magnitude of the People’s Liberation Army, and the way it operates, make fascinating viewing. “For example, we filmed some of the P.L.A.’s reconnaissance scouts being trained by kung fu masters. They perform stunts that, in some eyes, do not belong in the army.” These scouts are shown taking a one-inch thick, three-foot-long steel bar, swinging it in arcs and then smashing it on their heads until the bar is bent.

They then smash the bar on their heads until it is straight. Filming in China has its own peculiarities. Several times, cultural misunderstanding threatened the production, and always there were problems with communication and transport.

“Just the difficulty and logistics of moving round was something none of us had anticipated,” says the director, Scott Hicks. “Everyone blamed the Cultural Revolution. They said, “Oh, yes, the 10 lost years ...’ "Most of the time I had to remind myself that we were dealing not only with what is still, in many respects, a closed society; we were dealing with the most closed, the most paranoid, the most secret elements of that society, the military.”