Hundreds of millions of people in China have watched this 103-minute-long video just in the past week. There's never been anything close to its success in the English-language Internet world. Everyone in the China-policy community is aware of it and discussing it. I'm mentioning it here for several reasons.
First, it's just now available in a version with English subtitles for the whole length. The crowd-sourced translation effort is its own fascinating tale—you can see the crowd-sourcing page, mainly in Chinese, here—but for the moment the point is that English speakers can follow the whole thing, below.
Beyond that, this documentary, an expose of China's profound pollution problems by prominent journalist Chai Jing, has the potential to be one of those creations that serves as a before-and-after marker in a society's development. For America, before-and-after Uncle Tom's Cabin or How the Other Half Lives or The Feminine Mystique or Silent Spring. For France, before-and-after J'accuse. For China, potentially, before-and-after Chai Jing's 穹顶之下, Under the Dome.
Sustainability it all forms is the greatest threat to China's own continued growth, and the greatest challenge China's emergence presents to the world. That's according to me (and here), but if you look at this video, or consider Alan Taylor's stunning series of photos on our site yesterday (and two years ago), you'll see that it's not some oddball conceit. Here, for instance, is Alan's comparison of the exact same view in Beijing on a clear day and a smoggy one in the past few weeks.
Versus
I stress the potential effect of Under the Dome because how the Chinese government will continue to treat it is of enormous importance, and is in real-time flux. Through the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the government still seemed to be in denial about the country's pollution problems. The opaque skies that persisted until the very day of the opening ceremony were described in the government-controlled press as "mist." But within two or three years, the problems had become so undeniable that the government repositioned itself as the champion of public health and a cleaner, healthier, more sustainable China. Thus its allowing this documentary to be seen at all.