China’s presumed future president is a big fan of Hollywood movies on World War II, but says many top Chinese films are “not worth very much,” according to a US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.
A cable leaked this week by the Web site recounted a 2007 conversation between then US ambassador to China Clark Randt and Xi Jinping (習近平), who at the time was Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chief of Zhejiang Province.
Xi, now vice president and widely expected to succeed Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in 2013, told Randt he “tremendously enjoyed” the 1998 Steven Spielberg war epic Saving Private Ryan, the cable said.
“Xi said he particularly likes Hollywood movies about World War II and hopes Hollywood will continue to make them. Hollywood makes those movies well and such Hollywood movies are grand and truthful,” the cable said.
In 2006, Xi also owned and was trying to find time to watch the DVD of Flags of Our Fathers about the US-Japanese battle for Iwo Jima. He also had watched and enjoyed the Martin Scorsese thriller The Departed, the cable added.
China’s secretive CCP elite closely guard personal details of top officials.
Aside from the fact that he is married to a well-known Chinese singer, few personal details are available on Xi, who strikes a bland figure in public appearances, as do all of China’s top leaders.
Xi said that “Americans have a clear outlook on values and clearly demarcate between good and evil. In American movies, good usually prevails.”
By contrast, Xi described Curse of the Golden Flower, a 2006 Chinese movie directed by acclaimed director Zhang Yimou (張藝謀), as “confusing,” the cable said.
“Some Chinese moviemakers neglect values they should promote,” he was quoted as saying, adding that “America is a powerful nation in terms of culture because Americans say what they should say.”
“Too many Chinese moviemakers cater to foreigners’ interests or preconceptions, sometimes vulgarly so,” it added.
He also pilloried the kungfu action movie genre, now all the rage in China, and in particular Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon an international hit in 2000 by -Taiwanese director Ang Lee (李安), saying of such films, “all are the same, talking about bad things in imperial palaces.”
The lack of Oscar nominations or other top awards for major Chinese movies indicated “that such movies are not worth very much,” Xi reportedly said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS