Under the Dome (film)

, China The documentary is narrated by Chai, who presents the results of her year-long research mostly in the form of a lecture, reminiscent of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. The Great Smog of 1952 in London served as historical evidence Chai in creating her film. She also speaks with officials from London and Los Angeles on how their respective cities have managed to deal with historic issues of pollution. She says she has a personal grudge against smog, and sets out to answer three questions: What is smog? Where does it come from? And what can we do about it? For the rest of this 104 min-long ‘Ted Talk-style’ film, she answers these questions, using animations, charts, interviews, historical clips, and site visits. Within the documentary, Chai features two child figures, one being her baby daughter in Beijing, and the other a six-year old in Shanxi, both victims of air pollution. She must keep her daughter inside "like a prisoner" on days where the air quality is particularly bad, which Chai's measurements indicated were about half of the days in 2014. In her interview with the six-year old, Chai asks, "Have you ever seen a real star?" The child responds, "No." “What about blue sky?” Chai asks. The girl says, “I’ve seen one that’s a little blue." “What about white clouds?” Chai asks. “No, I haven’t,” the child replies. She advocates cleaning up dirty energy in China to current US standards, by washing coal, using better quality oil, installing filters, and other clean-up technology. She advocates replacing coal, the dirtiest energy source, with natural gas and oil. The targets of her film include state-owned oil companies such as China National Petroleum Corporation, which has also been the subject of the government's anti-corruption crackdown. These companies set their own production standards and the Ministry of Environmental Protection is largely powerless to respond. Steel producers and coal plants also ignore regulations to maximize profits. ==Release and ban==

Release Under the Dome was released online February 28, 2015, on the Saturday preceding the meetings of the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. The documentary was initially streamed on three major internet platforms, including Tencent, Youku, and the People's Daily Online, which is the online version of the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. The documentary was viewed more than 147 million times on Tencent on the evening of March 2, and received abundant discussion online. Ban After the initial surge in viewers for the documentary, the Chinese government blocked access to the online video. The documentary was banned on March 7, 2015, in mainland China, by the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party. The reason of banning was said to be the pressure of public perception of smog and the fear of collective action of the people. Removal and censorship of Under the Dome from various websites caused a stir and prompted discussion among netizens across Chinese social media platforms. The banning of the film in China evoked considerable criticism from within as Zhan Jiang, a professor of journalism and media studies in Beijing, declared that the documentary had “been spirited away by gremlins.” The contradictory actions of the government on Under the Dome—from supportive to against—implies that social media and censorship under China’s current conditions appear paradoxical and competitive in a political fashion. ==Impact==

According to the BBC, Under the Dome had garnered more than 100 million views online before its removal. A large number of netizens expressed their support for the documentary, and formed new views on China's haze problem after watching the film. In fact, phone calls to the Ministry of Environmental Protections hotline number (12369) increased 240% after the film was released online. However, four days after the release, Under the Dome was censored and taken down from social media by the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party, the same media hierarchy which supported the production of the documentary. It was said that this abrupt ban was because that the central government was faced with the pressure of public perception seeing smog as an urgent and serious problem, and fear of collective reaction online that asked for major changes in relevant legislation. The documentary also cast former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Jiang Zemin, in a negative light, prioritizing national GDP-increasing policies that damaged the environment. State-owned enterprises such as PetroChina and Sinopec, who are both guilty of environmental destruction, both greatly prospered under those ill economic policies, which were addressed in this film. Industry and business On March 2, 2015, the first weekday after the documentary's release, the stocks of several environmental companies traded up to ten percent higher. The stocks were in companies involved in pollutant treatment, air quality monitoring and green technology, including Sail Hero, Top Resource Conservation Engineering, LongKing Environmental and Create Technology & Science. == See also ==