Original subtitles

♪ Oh say, can you see ♪

♪ By the dawn's early light, ♪

♪ What so proudly we hailed ♪

♪ At the twilight's last gleaming ♪

♪ Whose broad stripes and bright stars, ♪

♪ Through the perilous fight ♪

♪ Over the ramparts we watched, ♪

♪ Were so gallantly streaming. ♪

♪ And the rockets red glare, ♪

♪ The bombs bursting in air, ♪

♪ Gave proof through the night ♪

♪ That our flag was still there. ♪

♪ Oh, say, does-- ♪

- I pity a country that would come up against us.

The synergy with air, land, and sea forces

and our ability to control the battle space

and seize the high ground is devastating.

All countries respect the power of the United States

and they respect how dominant we are in this region.

And we get better and better and better.

(drums pounding)

- Tonight to ten,

a rare glimpse of China's ambitious expansion

in one of the world's most contested regions.

We report from the South China Sea,

where the Chinese are warning off anyone

who comes too close to their building program.

- We continue our look this morning

at what China does not want you to see.

The United States says the superpower

is reclaiming land in the South China Sea.

- The fact that we're dealing with a situation right now

where we, the US, has to be much more aggressive

in dealing with the Chinese government.

- CNN has learned that the US Navy

is about to send a destroyer there.

Let's go to our CNN chief--

- [Announcer] CNN got exclusive access to classified

US surveillance flights over the islands.

- [John Narrating] The threat of China is becoming big news.

The media is beating the drums of war

as the world is being primed to regard China

as a new enemy.

- [Announcer] China's alarming creation of

entirely new territory in the South China Sea

is one part of a broader military push

that some fear is to challenge US dominance in the region.

- [John Narrating] China is building airstrips

in the South China Sea on disputed islands

condemned by an international tribunal.

This is now a flashpoint for war

between China and America.

What is not news is that China itself is under threat.

These American bases form a giant noose,

encircling China with missiles, bombers, warships.

All the way from Australia through the Pacific,

to Asia, and beyond.

- If you were in Beijing looking out,

you stood on the tallest building in Beijing

and looked out at the Pacific Ocean,

you'd see American warships.

You'd see Guam is about to sink

because there's so many missiles pointed at China.

You'd look up at Korea and see

American armaments pointing at China.

You'd see Japan, which is basically,

Japan's a glove over the American fist.

I think if I was Chinese, I'd have a little to worry about

about American aggressiveness.

- And we have China surrounded

and we're doing more all the time to try and

keep it surrounded and deepen that containment of China.

But China presents a fascinating case

of a country that is independent,

doesn't have foreign bases on its territory,

growing very rapidly,

not as rapidly now as it did for 30 years,

but still the second-ranking economy in the world.

- We have an adversary

and that adversary is China and that adversary,

unless there is dramatic reform inside China,

will be our enemy someday.

- One myth I think really needs to be dispelled

is that somehow China's aiming to replace America

and gonna run the world. (laughs)

First of all, the Chinese are not that stupid.

The West, with its Christian roots,

are about converting other people into their beliefs.

The Chinese are not about that.

Again, I'm not degrading the Western culture.

I'm just pointing out the inherent nature,

the DNA's of two different cultures.

The Chinese 2000 years ago built the Great Wall

to keep the barbarians out, not to invade them.

- [John Narrating] As the world's economic power

moves rapidly to Asia, the response of the Untied States

is to deploy the majority of its naval forces to Asia

and the Pacific.

This massive military buildup is known in Washington as

the "Pivot to Asia."

The target is China.

The great power game in the 21st century

is called perpetual war.

For America's unchallenged arms industry,

the annual prize is huge profits

from almost 600 billion dollars of military spending.

- [Announcer] Once an imaginary weapon on Star Wars,

the electromagnetic gun is now reality.

- You're sitting here thinking about these

next-generation and futuristic ideas

and we've got scientists who have designed these

and it's coming to life.

- [John Narrating] And the smartest weapons need enemies.

- As a Pacific nation, the United States

will play a larger and long-term role

in shaping this region and its future.

I have directed my national security team

to make our presence and mission in the Asian-Pacific

a top priority.

- In one sense, is the US already at war with China?

- Yes.

On the ground and in the air.

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama,

has committed to trillions

of dollars to our nuclear arsenal.

He's committing trillions of future dollars

to war in space and we need an enemy for all this money

and China's the perfect enemy.

- The aim of this film is to break a silence.

The United States and China may well be on a path to war

and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable.

In a few years, China has become the world's

second biggest economic power.

The United States is the world's biggest military power,

with bases and missiles and ships

covering every continent, every ocean.

China is a threat to this dominance, says Washington,

but who is the threat?

This film is about shifting power and great danger.

It's also a film about the human spirit

and the rise of an extraordinary resistance among people

on the front line of a coming war

where the words "never again" have an urgent meaning

for all of us.

(somber music)

- [John Narrating] This is Bikini,

the rim of an ancient underwater volcano

in the Marshall Islands.

With its necklace of 23 islands,

Bikini is a place of beauty and silence and menace.

Look closely where the Emerald Lagoon

suddenly falls into a vast black hole.

This is the crater of one of

the greatest manmade explosions,

the hydrogen bomb they call Bravo.

It vaporized an entire island

and poisoned almost everything and everyone.

As our plane flew low, we seemed to touch its deathly void.

The Marshall Islands lie in the vast Pacific Ocean

between the United States and Asia.

Captured from the Japanese in World War Two,

they've long been America's strategic secret,

it's stepping stone to Asia and China.

(guitar music)

People here sustain themselves for thousands of years

with abundant fish, breadfruit, and coconuts.

They were skilled navigators who sailed by the stars.

Westerners might call this paradise.

All that changed in 1946

when the United States took over the Marshall Islands

as a Trust Territory with an obligation

to protect the health and wellbeing of the people.

A nightmare began.

The islands were turned into a laboratory

for the testing of nuclear weapons

and the people into guinea pigs.

- Crossroads, scene 24, take two.

(clicks)

- [John Narrating] In this propaganda film,

the Bikini islanders are being deceived.

Unknown to them, plans were already underway

to destroy their paradise forever.

- Will you ask King Judah that the United States government

now wants to attempt to turn this great,

destructive force into something good for mankind

and that these experiments here at Bikini

are the first step in that direction.

(speaks foreign language)

Tell them that's fine,

everything being in God's hands, it must be good.

(speaks foreign language)

- [Announcer] 87 ships take position three miles

off Bikini to suffer the shattering impact

of the fifth atomic bomb.

- [John Narrating] An armada of warships

was assembled in Bikini Lagoon

in order to blow them to bits.

(chain clanking)

- [Announcer] The decks of the 73 test ships

anchored in Bikini Lagoon

are scenes of feverish activity

as scientists plot experimental programs

designed to furnish data on blast effects

of the mighty atom bomb.

Animals of many kinds--

- [John Narrating] Animals were strapped to the decks

like a perverse Noah's Ark.

The experiment was to see how they died,

how they burned.

- [Announcer] Special ointments are applied

to determine their protective quality.

Other parts of the exposed areas

are being left bare to the atom blasts.

- [Soldier] Three, two, one.

(eerie music)

- [John Narrating] Being on Bikini today

is disturbing ghosts.

I struggle through the jungle to the bunker

where they pressed the button at 6:45 on the morning

of the H-Bomb test.

Now claimed by the undergrowth,

it's like a subterranean temple to modern times.

They drank Milk Maid Powdered Milk,

smoked Lucky Strike Cigarettes,

and later this sign was erected that's beyond irony.

It says,

"Please leave this property as you find it,

"thank you for your kindness and understanding."

(water drips)

(jovial music)

- [Announcer] The Momselles give their all for their art

and you can just bet

that audience is giving with the wolf calls.

- [Male Announcer] The bikini, named after

the atomic explosion in the Pacific.

The bikini was an explosion everywhere.

- [John Narrating] In 1946, the bikini swimsuit was launched

to celebrate the nuclear explosions

that had destroyed life on Bikini Island.

The inventor of the bikini, a Frenchman,

made his fortune.

Today a bikini body is promoted in magazines

as an object of desire and good health.

The bodies of the people of Bikini and other islands

are the most irradiated in the world.

All these women have had thyroid cancer.

Today, Bikini is unfit for human life.

Radiation poisons the food and water,

and issues registered unsafe on a Geiger Counter.

The abandoned cemetery looks out to where

the sun rose one morning, then rose again

as apocalypse.

The equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb

was exploded in these islands

everyday for 12 years.

A scarred beauty has returned to the island

but the people haven't.

Exiled to barren islands, many of them starved.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson told them

it was safe to go home.

(Geiger Counter clicks)

But it wasn't safe.

And the US authorities knew it wasn't safe.

- What happened as a result of the Bravo test

was that a cover-up was launched

very shortly after March one.

There's such a history of wrong information,

outright lies, deception.

There was no attempt to take the most conservative approach

and make sure that everybody was okay.

- They knew the way the fallout was going to go.

And they took that risk and went ahead

and detonated the bomb, knowing full well

which way it was going to go.

They still had an opportunity to evacuate,

even on the day of the shot.

But these people were not evacuated,

we were not evacuated,

and the people in the path were not evacuated.

So that only leaves one to believe that

number one, the United States needed some guinea pigs

to study what the effects of radiation would do.

And that's a pretty strong indication

that the United States knew that.

- It seems extraordinary, here we are,

this far into the 21st century,

talking to people still frightened

of all that nuclear fallout, all those tests,

all those years ago.

The impression I get is that

there's so little trust among people.

- The US is trying to provide as much

information, as much good information as we can.

And so I wouldn't accept the characterization that

there've been lies and cover-ups.

- The word guinea pigs comes up a lot from these survivors.

- I would refer you to our embassy website on that.

- I've read it.

- And that question was looked at

during the Clinton administration

and that was not the conclusion they came to.

- [John Narrating] The secret of the Marshall Islands

is Project 4.1.

Declassified documents reveal a scientific program

that began as a study of mice

and became a study of human beings exposed to radiation.

- [Radio Announcer] Chicago is where it all began.

And to the AEC Argonnne Labs in Chicago last week

came seven men, natives of the Marshall Islands.

Levin is from Omelek.

He and the rest were irradiated by our

March 19th '54 hydrogen bomb test.

John is mayor of Rongelap,

which is 100 miles from Bikini.

John, as we said, is a savage,

but a happy, amenable savage.

His grandfather ran almost naked on his small atoll.

The white man brought money and religion

and a market for his copa.

John Reeds knows about God and is a pretty good mayor.

The iron room is a radiation detector for human beings.

Inside John the mayor,

whose first visit to the white man's country

meant San Francisco cable cars and Chicago skyscrapers

and streamlined trains,

whose first visit to the white man's country

meant the iron room.

A savage governs his life by ritual

and he understands this because

he thinks of it as a new ritual.

Sitting alone inside the room,

outside, a strange kind of priest in a long, white coat.

When the ritual of the iron room was over for John,

it began for the others.

As each finished, he was told it was over

and he was given apples and other good things to eat.

Then he took off the ritual clothing

and the seven men put on the suits and top coats

they had been lent in Hawaii

which they would return in Hawaii on their way back

in the Marshall Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

- The United States government documents

clearly demonstrate that its scientists

conducted human radiation experiments

with Marshallese citizens.

Some of our people were injected with

or coerced to drink fluids laced with radiation.

Other experimentation involved the impurposeful

and premature resettlement of people

on islands highly contaminated by weapons tests

to study how human beings absorb radiation

from their foods and environment.

(guitar music)

- [John Narrating] These people are guinea pigs.

They are part of the experiment Project 4.1.

They're being returned to Rongelap,

an island 100 miles from Bikini by the US Navy.

They were told repeatedly, it was safe to go home.

This happy couple believed they were going home to safety.

The man is John Anjain, the mayor of Rongelap.

The "happy savage" from the iron room in Chicago.

His wife is Madura, and this is their baby son Lekage.

They had no idea of the horror that lay ahead.

They are being returned to an island

described by a US atomic energy official

"as by far the most contaminated place on earth."

He added, "it will be interesting to get a measure

"of human uptake when people

"live in a contaminated environment."

The people of Rongelap remained on their poison island

for 28 years as guinea pigs.

The objects of regular, scientific examination.

(bell rings)

The islanders pleaded with the US authorities

to move them to safety as evidence emerged

of the second generation,

the children were also poisoned.

Desperate to leave, the islanders

called on Greenpeace to rescue them.

This ship, the Rainbow Warrior,

moved the entire population to an uncontaminated island.

They called it Operation Exodus.

(native music)

(eerie music)

This is Doctor Robert Conard,

a leading medical scientist

of Brookhaven National Laboratories.

Conard devoted his distinguished career

to examining the islanders.

He wrote, "the habitation of these people on the island

"will afford the most valuable ecological radiation data

"on human beings.

"The various radio isotopes present

"can be traced from the soil to the food chain

"and into human beings."

Doctor Conard gained the trust of whole communities

when he brought the islanders to New York to be examined,

he showed them the sights

and had them over for a barbecue.

When John Anjain's son Lekage died aged 18,

Doctor Conard sent the man they called a savage

a sympathy card.

From your friend, Bob.

In 1957, Madura Anjain was the smiling young woman

seen here on her way back to Rongelap,

unaware of the danger she and her family faced.

This is Madura 28 years later,

grieving the death of her son

Lekage from radiation poisoning.

Like her son and her husband,

Madura died from a virulent cancer.

- I don't see any great clinics that have been

established by, if not the Department of Energy,

certainly not by the US government.

- There's a clinic downtown in Majuro.

There's also a Whole Body Counter.

You can have the plutonium in your body measured as well.

Anyone can, for free.

- [John Narrating] This is the plutonium measuring shop

where they'll tell you how radioactive you are.

People waiting to be tested

are welcomed with a video

showing their islands being blown up.

And this reassuring commentary.

(speaks foreign language)

This is Rinok, a refugee from

the poisoned island of Rongelap,

whose family owned land and lived a secure, prosperous life.

Now she lives in a shack in the capital, Majuro,

with her children and grandchildren.

She has no water, no sanitation.

- [John] And power, she has electricity?

- [John Narrating] In 1986, the United States

granted limited independence to the Marshall Islanders

on condition that they accepted a mere

150 million dollars compensation

for the damage caused by nuclear testing.

A claims tribunal was set up

and soon ran out of money

and appealed to the US Congress more than a decade ago,

still awaits a reply.

Darlene Keju-Johnson was a young health worker

who became the champion of her people

after she discovered the full extent of their suffering

caused by nuclear testing that

many more islands were poisoned than the Americans claimed.

(applause)

This remarkable speech in 1983 broke the silence.

- I bring greetings from the Marshall Islands

and throughout Micronesia.

We have hundreds of women who have miscarriages.

We have leukemia cancers.

We have thyroid cancers.

We have stillborn babies.

We have nowadays, I just got back from home

and I've talked to many women and men in the population,

is that we have babies we call jellyfish babies.

A baby is born on a labor table

and it moves up and down like this.

It's a colorful, ugly thing

and it is not shaped like a human being.

It moves up and down like this on a labor table

because that thing is breathing.

That is a baby.

- [John Narrating] In 1982, Darlene married Giff Johnson,

the author of this tribute to his wife.

- Darlene was one of the liveliest,

most entertaining individuals that

I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

She was a voice for the voiceless.

- [John Narrating] Like so many Marshall Islanders,

Darlene died of cancer, age 45.

This is the largest of the islands, Kwajalein,

occupied by one of America's most important

and secretive bases.

Known as the Ronald Reagan Test Site,

it's a missile launch pad that commands

the Pacific Ocean all the way to Asia and China.

(waves crash)

Here, the people of the Marshall Islands

are once again being subjected to the testing

of weapons of mass destruction designed for a coming war.

The base is part of a remarkable plan

known as Vision 2020.

Devised in the 1990's, its aim is described

officially as full-spectrum dominance.

This means control of all land, sea, air,

cyberspace, and space.

- [Radio] Five, four, three, two, one,

ignition.

- [John Narrating] From California, almost 5000 miles away,

the US Air Force tests it's intercontinental missiles

by firing them at the Marshall Islands.

- Imagine a missile coming screaming out of the sky.

It's absolutely terrifying.

I think that there's really nothing that I can imagine

that would be more terrifying than this.

And we're talking about devices that

any one of them could go off course.

- [John Narrating] None of this disturbs life on the base,

where small town America has been recreated,

a wonderland of the suburban good life.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music)

- Fabulous.

There's nothing better than living on a tropical island.

- I pretty much have beachfront property, you know?

It's great, I love it here.

- [John Narrating] Just across the bay is Ebeye Island.

Known as the slum of the Pacific,

more than 12,000 people live here

on a strip of land less than a mile long.

Many of them refugees from what is now the missile base

and from islands poisoned by nuclear testing.

Every day, people from Ebeye are

brought to work on the missile base

to water the gardens and the golf course

then they are ferried back to their poverty.

This is apartheid in the Pacific.

(flies buzz)

- Ebeye needs a lot of things.

Medicine, education, and jobs.

Vegetables and fruits.

- Vegetables and fruits.

- Yes.

- Here we are, it's a tropical island,

and you need vegetables and fruits.

- Yes.

- [John Narrating] Fish, vegetables and fruit

were once abundant on Ebeye.

Today, fish is contaminated by toxic pollutants

says the Environmental Protection Agency.

Now the only food most people can afford

is processed and imported.

They have the highest rate of diabetes in the world.

- When someone gets really ill,

do they go to the hospital over on the base

because they've got a pretty modern clinic over there.

- They don't treat them with medicine.

They just go there for taking the plug and then x-ray.

- So what happens when somebody is seriously ill?

- They cannot do anything.

- The most consistent example given

is the example of the Ronald Reagan Missile Site

and Ebeye next to it.

On the Ronald Reagan Missile Site

is a vivid example of the United States,

golf courses and swimming pools

and all kinds of amenities.

Right next to it is what is called the slum of the Pacific.

- It's a challenge.

Ebeye is in great need right now.

We've talked about infrastructure.

One of the projects the US is working with

our Australian colleagues and with the Asia Development Bank

is a sewer and water project desperately needed for Ebeye.

Ebeye's overcrowded, the schools need repair.

- Actually, the US military did a survey back in the 70's

and found that the sewers didn't work

and the water didn't run and the electricity wasn't there.

It only happened not all that long ago

they found almost exactly the same thing.

Why hasn't that been fixed?

- There's complete agreement that Ebeye should be a priority

and not only because of the current activities

of the Ronald Reagan Space and Missile Defense Site,

but there's also now an additional component

that is providing for global security

and that's the Space Fence Project by the Air Force.

- [John Narrating] Every missile fired

on the Marshall Islands by the US military

costs 100 million dollars each.

This derelict school bus is the only one on Ebeye.

They can't afford to replace it.

- The base is not good for us,

the people of Marshall Islands, we have no need for it.

- [John] It's been used to test missiles

to fire at countries like China.

- Yes, and anywhere else if they want to.

- [John] What would you like to see happen there?

- I want our land back.

(violin music)

- [John Narrating] This is Shanghai,

the historic port on the Yangtze River,

China's greatest city.

I have arranged to meet the American author

James Bradley, whose latest best-selling book

The China Mirage, reveals an extraordinary hidden history

of American power and modern China.

- It was almost illegal for someone like me

to know of Chinese for almost all of American history.

The Chinese came to America to mine gold

and build the railroads and Americans decided

we didn't like the competition,

so in 1882 we had the Chinese Exclusion Acts

which kept the Chinese out of the United States

for about 100 years.

So you have the largest population in the world

that can't come to the United States,

so at just the point we're putting up

the Statue of Liberty saying, we welcome everybody,

we were erecting a wall saying,

we welcome everybody except those Chinese.

- [John Narrating] Fear of a rising China today

is the latest chapter in a history of propaganda

that presented the Chinese as uncouth and infantile.

To western popular and political culture,

the Chinese became the Yellow Peril.

(piano music)

And racial stereotypes bore the constant theme

of fear and threat.

- [Announcer] Boris Karloff as the evil Fu Manchu.

His passion for power twisting his brilliant mind

as he revels in the horrors of human sacrifice and torture.

Behind the mask of Fu Manchu.

- [John Narrating] This caricature of an entire people

concealed another agenda: opium.

For the American elite in the 19th century,

China was a goal mine of drugs.

- Warren Delano,

the grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

was the American opium king of China.

He was the biggest American opium dealer

second to the British.

He welcomed the first American ship into China

to help out with the opium wars.

Much of the east coast of America,

Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton,

were born from opium money.

The American Industrial Revolution

was funded by huge pools of money.

Where did this come from?

It came from illegal drugs

in the biggest market in the world: China.

- Let me get this right.

The grandfather of arguably the most liberal president,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a drug runner.

- Yes sir.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt never made much money in his life.

He had public service jobs that were very lowly paid,

but he had yachts, he had summer homes,

he had mansions in New York City.

The kids went to private schools.

He inherited a fortune from Warren Delano, his father,

who was the American opium king of China.

If you scratch anyone with the name Forbes in their name,

John Forbes Kerry, Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry--

- That's the present Secretary of State.

- Yes sir.

You'll find opium money.

His great-grandfather was an opium dealer.

How big was opium money?

Opium money built the first industrial city

in the United States, Lowell, Massachusetts.

It built the first five railroads in the United States.

Opium money all over the east coast,

but it wasn't talked about.

It was called the China Trade.

And if you go to various museums,

you can see teas and silks exhibited

and they keep quiet about all that big opium money.

- [John Narrating] In the scramble to get opium money,

China was invaded and colonized

by Britain and the other imperial powers.

Foreign armies grabbed whole swaths of China.

This is the American army in Tiananmen Square,

Peking, in 1900.

Great cities like Shanghai were taken over

and declared concessions

and foreigners lived a life of privilege and luxury

amidst terrible poverty imposed on the Chinese.

A resistance known as the Boxer Rebellion

was put down with a savagery.

This rape of China set the tone

for how China was perceived in the West

well into the 20th century.

This is the distinguished historian

Theodore H. White, an advisor to the White House,

speaking in the 1960's.

- Perhaps China is too vast to be governed by mercy.

Yet if Chinese mind craves order,

they must be brought to recognize

they are the biggest factor in the world's disorder.

And we must untangle the madness of their mind.

The most difficult task in the world

is to reach the minds of men who hate you.

- [John Narrating] What White was really complaining about

was the loss of a China that

the imperial West could dominate

and the defeat of General Chiang Kai-Shek,

who with his famously powerful Christian wife,

Mei-ling Soong, guarded America's interests in China.

That is, until they were thrown out in 1949

by a communist revolution led by Mao Zedong.

- Mao had beaten Chiang Kai-Shek three times

in huge battles involving millions of combatants.

Mao was a winner in this contest from

the early 1930's on, but we knew very little about it

and people don't understand that even today.

- [Announcer] Shanghai hears the message clearly

as foreign businessmen board up their shops.

Go now, go quickly, for communism marches.

Take what you can, but flee.

In pell-mell haste, the Western powers

evacuate the city they have built,

for good and bad alike must leave.

The businessmen come for profit

as well as missionaries come to heal

must say goodbye as out the Yancy

steams the last of Western influence

and farewell to a century.

(shouting)

- [John Narrating] Even today, it's difficult to understand

the paranoia ignited by Mao's revolution.

- As we look at China on the map,

we can see that China is the basic cause

of all of our troubles in Asia.

- I believe that for the sake of our safety,

it is necessary to be prepared for the possibility

of a Chinese missile attack on the United States.

- [John Narrating] One of the myths about Mao

is that he was an implacable enemy of the capitalist West.

(chorus singing)

Shanghai today is a prosperous international city

still run by the communists, at least in name.

- When I was last in China more than a generation ago,

the loudest noise was the tinkling of bicycle bells.

Mao had just died, the streets were dark,

the universities were closed.

The chaos of the cultural revolution

had given way to a great silence.

"We're exhausted," was the freest comment I heard.

Coming back, the change is barely comprehensible.

Here in Shanghai, the freedom bears no comparison.

Yes, there are issues with human rights,

especially the right to speak against the state

and challenge its power.

Since I was last here, millions of people

have been lifted out of poverty,

many of them into an entirely new middle class.

This epic is still barely understood in the West,

or should that be willfully misunderstood?

The truth is that China has matched America

at its own great game of capitalism

and that is unforgivable.

- [John Narrating] One measure of China's new capitalism

is the Hurun Rich List.

This league table of China's mega-rich

is published by Rupert Hoogewerf,

an old Etonian whose Chinese name is Hu Run.

He's received many awards,

including China's Man of the Year.

- This year, 2015, has probably been

the most extraordinary year of wealth creation

in the history of China again.

I've been doing this list for 15, 16 years.

I've never seen a year like 2015.

Normally for 200 million pounds or 300 million dollars,

we find say about 800,000 people.

This year, 2015, it's doubled.

There'll be more dollar billionaires known about in China

than in the US.

So the US, up until now,

has been the leader in terms of

the most successful business tycoons in the world.

China 2015, will have overtaken the US.

So, amazing.

- [John Narrating] Modern China is full of telling ironies,

not least this museum that was once the house

where Mao and his comrades secretly founded

the communist party of China in 1921.

Today it stands in the heart of an exclusive,

very capitalist shopping district.

- When you leave this shrine to China's great revolution,

you're confronted by a surreal spectacle.

For right outside where the

Chinese communist party was born,

are the very symbols of capitalism.

Starbucks, Apple, Cartier, Dolce and Gabbana,

and down there perhaps the free market's greatest triumph:

bottled water that insures you live young,

costing six pounds for a small bottle in my hotel.

Would Mao spin in his tomb if he was here?

I'm not so sure.

Hidden history is always the key to the truth.

Five years before his great communist revolution in 1949,

Mao sent this secret message to Washington.

"China must industrialize," wrote Mao,

"this can only be done by free enterprise.

"Chinese and American interests fit together

"economically and politically.

"America need not fear that we will not be cooperative.

"We cannot risk crossing America.

"We cannot risk any conflict."

Mao received no reply.

Nothing has changed.

- Mao Zedong was looking to be a friend

with the United States from the beginning.

Mao says, I will go meet

Franklin Roosevelt in the White House.

Mao reaches out in 1950 to Harry Truman.

He reaches out to Dwight Eisenhower.

His hand was tossed away.

- [John Narrating] This opportunity that

might have changed history,

prevented wars, saved countless lives,

was lost because the truth of Mao's overtures

was denied in the Washington of the 1950's.

State Department officials who had carried Mao's messages

were condemned unjustly as communist traitors.

- Everybody who knew Mao, who spoke Chinese, was gone.

In the 1950's, the State Department

had no employees who spoke Chinese.

It's resulted in us not having relations

with the number one, most populous country in the world.

- [John Narrating] In 1979, this man,

Deng Xaoping, became China's paramount leader.

He said, "Socialism does not mean shared poverty."

This was code for the most radical reform

since Mao's revolution, the return of capitalism to China,

but this time controlled by the communist party.

"To be rich is glorious,"

Deng was reported as saying.

America was now threatened by the emergence

of a vast image of itself.

This is one of the many very exclusive

gated communities in Shanghai

where an apartment is one of the prizes

of the new communism.

I'd arranged to see Professor Zhang Weiwei,

a close aide to the late Deng Xiaoping,

the man who changed China.

- Deng is really, extremely long-term visionary leader

with an exceedingly long-term at strategic vision

for his country and for his people.

China is still following that path.

Actually, this is really a tradition

from China's long history.

You look at even like Mao.

He said we should surpass UK,

by which we should surpass the United States,

so these tradition continues to this day.

Even Xi Jinping to this day is also doing this idea.

Actually, what many Chinese have problem

with the Western media is the stereotypes about China.

If you contend with stereotypes, you miss so many things.

If BBC broadcast something,

they are happy to always mention the communist dictatorship,

this autocracy.

Actually, with this kind of label

you cannot understand this China as it is.

But if you watch BBC or CNN or read Economist

and try to understand China, it will be a failure.

It's impossible.

- Multiple parties fight for political power

and everyone holding on to them

as the only path to salvation

to the long-suffering, developing world.

- [John Narrating] This is Eric Li,

a Shanghai entrepreneur educated in America

and typical of a new, confident,

outspoken political class.

- In China, there are a lot of problems.

But at the moment, the Chinese, the party state,

has proven an extraordinary ability to change.

I make the joke:

in America you can change political parties

but you can't change the policies.

In China you cannot change the party

but you can change policies.

In 65 or 66 years, China has been run by one single party

yet the political changes that have taken place

in China these past 66 years have been wider

and broader and greater than probably

any other major country in modern memory.

- So in that time, China ceased to be communist.

Is that what you're saying?

- Well, China is a market economy.

It's a vibrant market economy

but it is not a capitalist country.

Here's why.

There's no way a group of billionaires

could control the party bureau

as billionaires control American policy making.

So in China, you have a vibrant market economy

but capital does not rise above political authority.

Capital does not have enshrined rights.

In America, capital,

the interest of capital and capital itself

has risen above the American nation.

The political authority cannot check the power of capital.

That's why America is a capitalist country

but China's not.

- [John Narrating] This is the ironic title

of a best-selling book by Zhang Lijia,

a journalist and critic who lives in Beijing.

- Many Americans imagine that the Chinese people

live a miserable, repressed life with no freedom whatsoever.

That's not quite true.

If you speak to many ordinary Chinese people,

they will tell you they feel their lives are quite free.

Some 500 million people have been lifted off poverty

and some would say probably 600 million people.

That's a great achievement.

For many Americans, the Yellow Peril has never left them.

I think there's a fear about China.

There's a fear of China's rapid rise,

but it also has a lot to do with China's

label as a communist state.

- China's objectives are modest

compared with their weight.

They're not trying to run the world.

They're not even trying to run the Asian-Pacific.

I think they want to keep America

from dominating the Asian-Pacific.

So they have what they believe

is their rightful place in the Asian-Pacific,

because of all civilizations

and all the history on their side,

so their objectives are really modest

compared with their capacity.

- The new wealth in China,

they often say this is the product of

self-made entrepreneurial skill but

is it not also the product of

the exploitation of people at the bottom,

what are known in China as migrants.

But they're not really migrants, they're Chinese.

- (laughs) If you really go to

talk to these migrant workers,

you will find quite surprisingly,

over the past five to seven years,

they have experienced a greater income increase

than any other social groups.

China is not a class society.

- [John Narrating] But China is a class society.

These are the homes of migrant workers,

people who build and service the new China.

Here it's not uncommon for three families

to share one tiny flat.

- You know, you associate a socialist country with equality

but unfortunately it seems the reform has started.

China has become one of the

most unequal societies in the world.

The income gap is widening.

Governments, I feel, have retreated some of

the responsibilities, left the markets to take over,

but the market does not always treat women kindly.

Some private companies that would just refuse

to hire child-bearing aged women.

And sometimes when women became pregnant,

they would sack them.

Because they don't want to pay their maternity leave.

And in fact, the income gap has grown much bigger

between men and women.

- Your old boss, Deng Xaoping,

presided over the bloodshed in Tiananmen Square.

What would you say to the survivors of Tiananmen Square,

because so many of those did fight

for what they saw as democratic change in China?

- In 1989, there were two political forces.

One of those were presented by the Chinese students.

Their hero was Mikhail Gorbachev,

who happened to be in Beijing.

Their slogan was,

"Soviet Union's Today is China's Tomorrow."

So the idea was political reform first,

other reform second.

Otherwise, China would be hopeless.

Deng's message was the opposite.

He thought Gorbachev was an idiot.

He thought China must have economic reform first,

other reform second.

This priority must be set clear.

Unfortunately, at that particular moment in 1989,

the two political forces could not reach a compromise.

That's when the tragedy occurred.

- [John Narrating] It was more than a tragedy.

It was a massacre

of which the memory remains a raw presence in modern China.

- Why does the Chinese state still fear the few?

The few who speak out, and I'm thinking of--

- Liu Xiaobo? (laughs)

- [John] Exactly.

This man won the Nobel Peace Prize and he's in prison.

- He violated Chinese law by a big margin.

So actually the freedom of expression,

similar views are aired by many people

but he really going to the extreme.

- [John Narrating] Liu Xiaobo challenged the government

to implement democratic reforms

and he spent a total of 13 years in prison.

- Why can't a confident China

accept a criticism like that?

- Nobel peace committee makes huge mistake.

They owe the Chinese an explanation.

If you cross a line, you violate the constitution,

you violate so many laws, you should be punished.

(somber music)

- [John Narrating] And yet in China today,

the spirit of protest and dissent

lives on in different forms.

In 2015, strikes and community protests

and activism reach record levels.

This resistance is seldom reported in the West.

- So there are lots of protests in China.

Typical for example, land being grabbed by

officials for commercial development

and the farmers are not being compensated properly.

But the farmers now know,

are more aware of their rights so they protest.

Or young workers from the factory,

they demand a better wage and a better working condition,

but many of the protests they are economic driven,

not political driven.

They are regional, not nation-wide.

So this kind of thing is unlikely

to develop into real movement

or so-called, you call that revolution.

- [John] So the Mao's revolution

was the last revolution?

- (laughs) Well, never say never.

(helicopter whirs)

- [John Narrating] The Japanese island of Okinawa

is occupied by 32 military installations.

From here, the United States has attacked Korea,

Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq.

The sky is full of planes and helicopters.

(helicopter whirs)

Wherever people go, they are fenced in

and told to keep out.

Okinawa is the front line of a beckoning war

with China.

(people shouting)

Aged 87, Fumiko Shimabukuro

is one of the leaders of a non-violent resistance

that's challenging Washington's "Pivot to Asia."

(people shouting)

- [John Narrating] Fumiko is a survivor.

A quarter of the civilians on the island

were killed in the American invasion in 1945

and a fear of war has been passed through the generations.

(gentle music)

Today, those who witnessed these horrors

live in a place of extraordinary beauty

surrounded by coral reefs and a unique marine life.

It was here in Henoko Bay

that the survivors of World War Two sought refuge

and it's this they're now fighting to save.

It's an epic struggle that pits these island people

against the greatest military power on Earth.

- This is the office of a former governor of Okinawa,

Ota Masahide.

What is done is create not so much a museum,

but an appeal to the outside world

to understand the resistance in Okinawa,

to understand the suffering,

to read its hidden history.

It begins in 1945 when the Americans invaded.

Here's General MacArthur arriving in Okinawa.

A second invasion happened 10 years later

in what became known as

the Bulldozer's and Bayonets campaign.

American forces seized prime agricultural land,

burned farm houses, and killed livestock.

The dispossessed people of Okinawa

march the length of Japan, appealing for help.

- This wall is devoted to a resistance in Okinawa

that never ceases.

Everywhere people go on the island,

they are confronted by this sign.

It tells them they must not go past

this fence topped with barbed wire.

These fences run like great ribbons across the island

and the bases themselves cut swaths across Okinawa.

But all around them are people

with this continuing demonstration,

this continuing resistance.

And they have a message.

It's: "People of the World,

"Watch what Japan and the US are doing.

"Don't let them force the bases on Okinawa."

- [John Narrating] All this will be lost

when much of the bay becomes

concrete runways for bombers at Camp Schwab,

the huge US Marine base behind this fence.

(applause)

In 2014, Okinawa elected a new governor,

Takeshi Onaga, who won by a landslide on one issue.

Stopping the new base at Henoko.

This was election night outside the American base

at Camp Schwab.

(cheering)

♪ We shall overcome ♪

♪ We shall overcome someday ♪

♪ Oh, deep in my heart ♪

♪ I do believe ♪

♪ We shall overcome someday ♪

The New Year's celebration of their victory

was bittersweet.

The government in Tokyo resented this

unprecedented challenge to its authority.

The issue is now in the Japanese courts.

Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe,

has also made clear that with the backing

of his powerful patron America,

he wants to reawaken Japanese nationalism

and reclaim it's military power.

(helicopter whirs)

(drum pounds)

(singing)

While we were filming this ceremony outside the base,

on a day when people paid respect

to their departed loved ones,

giant American helicopters circled above us,

intimidating as always.

The threat of these low-flying aircraft

is a constant presence in Okinawa.

Teachers often can't teach because of the noise

and the fear.

(somber music)

This was the carnage when an American fighter

crashed into a primary school

after the pilot had ejected to safety.

Haru Akira, aged seven, was terribly burned.

Akira suffered throughout his youth

and died from his injuries age 21.

Another tragedy waits to happen on Okinawa.

US military aircraft have been involved

in 44 accidents on the island.

The latest threat is this hybrid plane, the Osprey,

notorious for its safety issues.

(dance music)

Wherever the military is based in Asia,

there is a relationship with local people,

especially women, that often breeds resentment.

In Okinawa, this resentment ignited a riot in 1970.

Scores of American GI's were pulled from their cars

which were set alight.

For Washington and it's compliant ally in Tokyo,

it's this kind of insurrection that they fear.

During the making of this film,

a young woman was raped and murdered,

allegedly by an American military contractor

from one of the bases.

(chanting)

It was the latest of thousands of cases of violence

and it brought massive crowds into the streets,

demanding an end to the

military occupation of their country.

(aircraft rumbles)

This is a Mace missile,

designed to carry a nuclear warhead.

During the Cold War, the United States

secretly installed nuclear weapons

at this launch pad in Okinawa.

Most of them were aimed at China.

Today, the nuclear missile site

is run by a Buddhist organization,

the Soka Gakkai, as a peace museum.

- In 1962, the atomic weapons,

that were on the missile,

was almost launched.

- They were almost launched?

- Yeah, according to the spokesman of this military base,

said they were ordered to prepare.

Then we received second order to stop it.

- [John Narrating] One of the American servicemen

whose job was to fire the Mace missiles

has since revealed that China was a nuclear target

during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

- We were told that we had to launch all the missiles.

But we only had one missile headed towards Russia

and we did not see why we

should have to involve the other countries.

The captain suggested that everybody crack the doors open

so it would take less time to launch the missile

if the doors were cracked open.

(beeping)

- [John Narrating] One of the launch crews

was on the point of firing their missiles

when a duty officer suspected the order was false.

- The officer that was on the B side

was told to send two men over there with 45's

and to shoot anybody that tried to launch

until the situation was resolved.

And it would only take like 15, 20 seconds

to run the distance between the two command centers.

So those two men kept that whole crew at bay

while we made a decision as what to do.

And it wasn't very long, maybe two or three seconds later

where a very nervous major came over the intercom

issuing the stand down order.

And then we just kind of looked at each other, like

we could have exterminated the whole planet.

The major who had given the launch order

was quietly court-martialed

and dismissed from the Air Force.

- That morning is just as familiar to me

and as clear as yesterday morning is.

And this is 53 years later

and how clear blue the sky was

and there was just some very light clouds

and there was a perfect breeze blowing

at the perfect temperature.

I did not know what the temperature was,

but it just felt perfect.

And we were all just kind of taking it in

and taking in the smell of the air

and the sea and the land mixture together

and everything smelled so beautiful.

- This is very interesting because it shows

the cities in China where these Mace missiles were aimed at.

Which ones do we have here?

- This Okinawa Island.

So within 2000 kilometers you find Peking, or Beijing,

Xi'an, Jiuzhaigou, Hong Kong, Shanghai,

Taiwan and Taipei, and Pyongyang, North Korea.

Within the range of missile.

(aircraft rumbles)

(somber music)

- [John Narrating] This is the work of

the Okinawan sculptor, Kinjo Minoru.

It's a tribute to the suffering and resistance

of the people of this island.

More than 1000 miles away on the Korean island of Jeju,

these symbols of struggle are hauntingly similar.

The work of Korean sculptor Koh Gil-chun,

represents another fight of island people for freedom.

(gentle music)

A semi-tropical sanctuary of unusual beauty,

Jeju Island is a world heritage site.

The government of South Korea declared it

an island of world peace.

But on this island of peace has been built

one of the most provocative military bases in the world,

less than 400 miles from Shanghai.

Like Okinawa and the Marshall Islands,

this is America's frontline in it's so-called

"Pivot to Asia."

Here in once unspoiled Gangjeong Village,

the South Korean Navy has built a base

for American aircraft carriers,

nuclear submarines, and destroyers

equipped with the Aegis ballistic missile

aimed at China's defenses.

China's lifelines to the world in oil, trade, resources,

depend on shipping that comes through

chokepoints like this.

- The US pivot into the Asian-Pacific

is really intended to create the ability

to put a loaded gun to the head of China

and say, you will do as we say

otherwise we will be able to restrict.

We'll be able to shut down, choke off

your importation of oil and other resources.

(chanting)

- [John Narrating] For nine years, every day,

often twice a day, these Catholic priests

have staged a mass that blocked the gates

of the new military base on Jeju Island.

(singing)

In a country where political demonstrations

can be easily banned, unlike powerful religions,

the tactic has produced this spectacle of resistance.

(man speaking on loudspeaker)

(speaks foreign language)

Father Mun Jeong-hyeon has led the fight

to stop the base being built

and several times suffered serious injuries.

(singing)

- I sing four songs everyday.

Before the Mass, during the Mass, at the end of the Mass

and the end of the rosary.

The content of song is very beautiful.

The writer and composer is the musician

from this island.

I love him very much and he gave me their song

which I practiced and I became a master

to sing that song because I practice everyday. (laughs)

- [John] You sing it with such passion.

(singing)

- Sometimes we just wait.

Typhoon, typhoon strike!

- [John] Do you sing then?

Do you have a Mass when the typhoons strike?

- Oh yes.

No exceptions.

- [John] What will happen

if this base becomes operational?

- They have destroyed the environment,

they destroy the life of all of us.

We should be witness of their oppression and violence.

- [John] Why do they do it?

- They'd like to rule the Pacific area, the whole area.

They'd like to make China isolated in this globe.

The US government want to be in power of this world.

(laughs)

- [John Narrating] Meanwhile, a Quaker called Mr. Oh

joins them with his own ritual of protest,

accompanied by an artist called Wild Flower.

- [John Narrating] This is the center of an empire

that never speaks its name,

whose power is represented in this extraordinary world map

of American military bases.

4000 bases in the United States,

almost 1000 bases spread across every continent.

- The archipelago of empire,

the bases that we have around the world

hidden in plain sight are the real territory of our empire

but at the same time we maintain independent governments

in Japan or South Korea or Germany.

They don't have autonomy when it comes to foreign policy.

So it's a very sophisticated and effective system

whereby we pat ourselves on the back for

helping to midwife democracy in Japan

and Germany and South Korea and various other places

while keeping the lid on in that we don't know

what these countries would do if they were

fully independent.

And the beauty of this system is that

most people pay no attention to it at all.

They think it's just a natural occurrence

to have 50,000 American troops in Japan.

- There's no country that has better anti-imperial credit--

(laughs) cred, then the United States.

And we are not trying to recreate

the glories of the British Empire.

We're arguing that the world is round.

We have a global policy

and all nations have global rights.

- No ocean has ever been dominated

the way the US dominates the Pacific, Navy and Air Force.

They claim that in the Pearl Harbor headquarters

of the Pacific Command, they claim to be responsible

for 52 percent of the Earth's surface.

And when you look at their logo,

it shows an eagle over the Aleutian Islands

with one tail coming down somewhere near Seattle

and the other coming down right over Beijing.

So Beijing looks at a network of bases,

a real archipelago of empire

that's been built up since the Korean War.

- You have had and still have

an arc of bases that start in Australia

and go through the Pacific--

- No.

We have no bases in Australia.

- You have Pine Gap, you have Darwin--

- No.

- And you have a new facility in Western Australia.

- No, to speak precisely,

we have no military bases in Australia.

What we do is is operate with and in Australian bases.

But we're not in the basing business nowadays.

- There's a growing collection of what are referred to as

"lilypad bases."

These are bases that have typically two, 300 troops,

no family members, very few amenities,

and they are often quite secretive.

They are bases that are frequently constructed

within a foreign country's base to disguise it

and generally are not referred to as bases.

- [John Narrating] Many of these bases have been set up

to combat China's worldwide economic influence.

From these bases, the United States operates a secret army

in 147 countries.

- If you're gonna be a free country

rather than give in to every gangster regime in the world,

you're gonna have to take a risk.

'Cause the gangsters, they want to eliminate

good people in the world so they can--

and in China, they want to dominate all of the Far East,

they want to dominate.

Just like Japan wanted to before World War Two.

Their goal was to dominate that part of the world.

Today, because there's been no political reform in Beijing,

these guys want to dominate a huge chunk of the planet.

(mumbles)

- [John Narrating] Andrew Krepinevich served on

America's National Defense Panel.

He's a military strategist and war planner.

- You've written that airstrikes and naval blockades

have a role to play in punishing China.

You've described the need for sea mines.

You've described the need for special forces,

US Special Forces, and missiles placed on islands.

This sounds like a preparation for war.

- Our first president, George Washington,

said that if you want peace, prepare for war.

And essentially what the United States is doing again

is responding to provocative behavior on the part of China.

And just as we did in the Cold War,

the idea was to have a position of military strength

such that your adversaries were not tempted

to act in aggressive ways or

try and employ coercion to get their way.

- Just last week the US Navy sent a guided missile destroyer

into the Spratly Islands, the South China Sea.

And what was different about this, I think,

was that Chinese fighters scrambled.

That sounds like an escalator.

- Well again, from an American prospective,

the escalation was that the Chinese

beginning to militarize these islands in the first place,

moving its military capabilities down into that region,

engaging in provocative behavior against

the commercial activities and military forces of

other minor countries in the region

that have claim to those islands.

So it's a response to Chinese intimidation rather--

- Excuse me, how is commerce being intimidated

in the South China Sea?

- There have been no military forces,

no military bases there.

The Chinese--

- Except the United States military base.

- Not in the South China Sea.

Not even in the Philippines because

the United States withdrew its forces in the Philippines.

- But the United States is back in the Philippines.

- The Philippines and the United States have announced

five different locations scattered all throughout

the Philippines where US troops will

be stationed on a rotational basis.

- [John Narrating] This threat to China from yet more

US bases on its doorstep was not an issue

when an arbitration tribunal ruled against China's claims

to the strategic Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

In 2015, the US Navy rehearsed a blockade

that would cut China's lifelines of oil

and trade and raw materials.

The danger of confrontation grows by the day.

- The US Navy is on the doorstep of China

regardless of disputed islands

and is there with low-draft ships,

planes, battle groups.

It's right on the doorsteps.

What of Chinese ships?

What if the equivalent was off California?

- Well John, we ask ourselves that question regularly.

And it's important to put yourself in the other guy's shoes.

So look.

We don't operate in the Pacific in an effort

to scare China, to contain China, to backfoot China.

Our operations and our presence,

first of all, is warmly welcomed by the vast majority

of the coastal states, but secondly,

is fully accepted by the Chinese.

Time after time--

- Excuse me, is it fully accepted?

- Yes, by their words.

The Chinese leaders--

- [John] My impression is that they're scared.

- [John Narrating] And this is what they're scared of.

A noose of bases right around China.

Missiles, bombers, drones, warships.

A provocation of war.

- Today, I state clearly and with conviction.

America's commitment to seek the peace and security

of a world without nuclear weapons.

(cheering)

- [John Narrating] Under Obama,

nuclear warhead spending has risen higher

than under any president since the end of the Cold War.

- It's all a magician's show because

at the same time that Obama is talking about that,

not only is he spending a trillion dollars

to modernize US nuclear forces,

but he's deploying these missile defense systems

to encircle Russia and China,

which makes it impossible to

get rid of nuclear weapons in that climate.

- Everybody wants to look like they're tough.

See, I gotta be tough.

I'm not afraid of doing anything military.

I'm not afraid of threatening.

I'm a hairy-chested gorilla.

And you don't want to look like you're weak,

so what you do is you talk more and more aggressively

and if you don't want to do it yourself,

because you maybe think it doesn't look very presidential,

you let somebody under you do the talking.

And the United States has gotten into a situation

where there's a lot of military saber-rattling

and it's really being orchestrated from the top.

- Yeah, that seems incredibly dangerous, all of this.

- That's an understatement, I think, but I agree.

- When you routinely plan for mass murder,

you become conditioned to it.

That's what this is.

We accept it.

Oh yeah, we have nuclear weapons.

- The Defense Secretary has just announced

that there will be warships and special forces

and planes sent to the Philippines

and the Wall Street Journal has described this as

"the vanguard of a major US presence in Southeast Asia."

That sounds like--

- Where does this end?

What's the purpose?

I mean, where are we going to stop this process

before it starts a war?

And then if the war starts, where does that end?

♪ America, America ♪

♪ God shed his grace on me ♪

♪ And crown thy good with brotherhood ♪

♪ From sea to shining sea ♪

(wind howls)

The scientific studies that I teach by the scientists

that predict that the Earth can be made

essentially uninhabitable from nuclear war,

the scientists have been begging the Obama administration--

well, they wouldn't say begging.

But they have made multiple requests

to meet with them and discuss these predictions

because they're peer-reviewed studies

and they've been turned down over and over again.

They've been peripherally told that,

well we don't think the long-term

environmental consequences of nuclear war

are all that important if the immediate effects

of nuclear war don't stop it.

That the long-term environmental consequences of nuclear war

are liable to wipe out the human race.

- [John] In one exchange,

nuclear exchange between the US and China,

what could be the consequences?

- Well let me just give you an example

of what one Chinese four or five megaton warhead

would do to a city in the United States if it got through.

The detonation of that weapon over a city

would instantly ignite about

six or 700 square miles on fire.

And within 20 to 30 minutes,

all of those fires would coalesce

into a single gigantic firestorm.

There would be no escape from it.

So all the people there would perish.

So the US, with say,

hundreds of nuclear weapons on Chinese cities.

When you combine all the smoke

from these nuclear weapons detonating,

it actually creates millions of tons of smoke.

Black carbon smoke that'll rise above cloud level

into the stratosphere, it's heated by the sun,

it acts like a solar collector.

And that smoke, because of that,

will stay there for 10 years or longer.

And what the smoke does is it blocks

warming sunlight from reaching the surface of the earth

and it becomes so cold in a matter of just a couple of weeks

that the temperature will fall below freezing

every day for one to three years.

And it will become too cold to grow food crops

for at least 10 years or longer.

(wind howls)

- I mean, there's a total disconnect

with the changing world.

You have a giant rising power, in this case, China.

Why would you expect a giant rising power

to not want to have more control over its destiny?

What we should be doing in my view

is trying to cultivate a sense of friendship and cooperation

and we can have our differences with them.

If we think they're doing something in trade

that we don't like, let's have it out with them.

But this saber-rattling is

the worst thing we can possibly do.

(cheering)

- It is time to show the whole world

that America is back.

Bigger, and better, and stronger than ever before.

We don't have victories anymore.

We used to have victories, but we don't have 'em.

When was the last time anybody saw us beating,

let's say China?

In a trade deal, they kill us.

We can't continue to allow China

to rape our country, and that's what they're doing.

It's the greatest theft in the history of the world.

(audience cheers)

- [John Narrating] The new president, Donald Trump,

has a problem with China.

The urgent question now is,

will Trump continue with the provocations

revealed in this film and take us all to the edge of war?

- There never have been two countries

more interdependent on each other

than China and the US in history.

And China is the largest trading nation

in the world and in history.

So China's economy and their societies, their lives,

are linked to the entire world.

Including America and the West and all the other countries.

So I think interdependence between these two countries

and among all the nations of the world,

speak to peace.

(gentle music)

- [John Narrating] We don't have to accept the word

of those who conjure up threats and false enemies

to justify the business and profit of war

if we recognize there is another superpower,

and that's us.

Ordinary people everywhere, like the people of Okinawa,

Jeju Island, the Marshall Islands,

China, the United States.

By speaking out, they deliver a warning to all of us.

Can we really afford to be silent?

♪ We'll meet again ♪

♪ Don't know where, don't know when ♪

♪ But I know we'll meet again ♪

♪ Some sunny day ♪

♪ Keep smiling through ♪

♪ Just like you always do ♪

♪ 'Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds ♪

♪ Far away ♪

♪ So will you please say hello ♪

♪ To the folks that I know ♪

♪ Tell them I won't be long ♪

♪ They'll be happy to know ♪

♪ That as you saw me go ♪

♪ I was singing this song ♪

♪ We'll meet again ♪

♪ Don't know where ♪

♪ Don't know when ♪

♪ But I know we'll meet again ♪

♪ Some sunny day ♪

♪ We'll meet again ♪

♪ Don't know where ♪

♪ Don't know when ♪

♪ But I know we'll meet again ♪

♪ Some sunny day ♪

♪ Keep smiling through ♪

♪ Just like you always do ♪

♪ 'Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away ♪

♪ So will you please say hello ♪

♪ To the folks that I know ♪

♪ Tell them I won't be long ♪

♪ They'll be happy to know ♪

♪ That as you saw me go ♪

♪ I was singing this song ♪

♪ We'll meet again ♪

♪ Don't know where ♪

♪ Don't know when ♪

♪ But I know we'll meet again ♪

♪ Some sunny day ♪