The Coming War on China

The incendiary premise of Australian journalist John Pilger's documentary is that the United States, which has long tried to establish global hegemony, is working to fashion a military “noose” around a resurgent China—a move that represents a preparation for war. According to Pilger, this was clearly implied in President Barack Obama's “pivot” toward Asia, but that policy was hardly new. In the first and most powerful part of the film, Pilger excoriates America's role in the Marshall Islands, a Pacific paradise that the U.S. used after World War II as a testing-ground for nuclear weapons, treating the local population as human guinea pigs to study the effects of radiation. Pilger goes on to celebrate activists who oppose American bases in Japan and South Korea before concluding with a segment predicting a nuclear conflagration that will doom the planet unless other citizens rise up against American imperialism. Pilger intends his film as a rejoinder to what he sees as anti-China propaganda fostered by the U.S. government and spread by the American media. But while he makes some telling points, his take on the policies of modern China, which he depicts as based on irenic Buddhism in contrast to a militant, conversion-obsessed Judeo-Christian tradition, is absurdly simplistic. Still, even though The Coming War on China is hardly evenhanded, it does present an alternative view of American policy in the Pacific that is thought-provoking and—with its blend of archival footage, interviews, and occasional snippets of animation—skillfully argued. A strong optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)