ORF Videos - The Documentary Network

Tortured Beauties – Models in China

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 17:01:09 +0000

Modern China is working hard to give itself a new image. And now a frightening new craze for Western-style beauty is driving a nationwide boom in dangerous and drastic cosmetic surgery procedures. "Until recently, communist ideals valued natural beauty. Today, other things are considered beautiful", explains fashion photographer Zheng Chen. At just 19, young model Ai Xiao Qi has found success in China's fashion world. But she isn't under any illusions about the painful cause of her popularity: "when you're in front of cameras, your face must have a strong profile". A strong profile: the new Chinese euphemism for surgically-enhanced Western features. In a bid to be as tall as Westerners, Chinese girls are even undergoing gruesome procedures to break and extend their legs. After a botched surgery, tour guide Qi Lixia ended up horribly disfigured. "The doctors tried to re-assure me. But my nose was completely deformed." But such is the pressure on young girls that she's prepared to go under the knife again: "Looking good helps me in my job". As this mantra becomes more widely accepted, the message to young girls is clear: it's what's on the outside that counts.

Richie Rich gets Richer

Documentary.net staff — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:39:38 +0000

As countries like Greece and Spain struggle under massive debts that are impoverishing its people, the elites around the world are getting richer and richer. This report looks at the ever widening gap. "There are customers that have all the way up to 100 vehicles in their garage." Torsten Muller-Otvos from Rolls Royce tells us. Each one costs about half a million and last year Rolls Royce sold more cars than ever before in their 100-year history, but then the luxury industry knows no crisis. Since 2009 the rich have become on average 6 percent richer. So while one in six Americans now has no health insurance, Manhattan's 58 billionaires have gotten richer. As Manuel Koch points out the ratio of return expected by the rich has totally shifted, "People used to be happy making three million profit. Today companies like Apple account for 6 billion profit. That's profit! Not turnover." But despite their greater income the super-rich aren't too happy about the idea of their tax loopholes being closed. In their minds they give back, even if its not through taxes. "I know a lot of rich friends who have charities...when they reach a certain level they give back to the community. So I think less tax is always better than too much." But as the world struggles through a financial crisis and the globe-trotting elite continue to grow wealthier, there's not much evidence they have their communities interests at heart. by ORF

China: The Orient Excess

Documentary.net staff — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:28:42 +0000

Three decades of economic liberalisation have radically changed the face of China. With the number of Chinese billionaires increasing rapidly (it now has almost as many as the US and is closing in on the top spot), the communist ideals of the past seem to have faded beyond recognition. "You can never have enough money. Money helps me fulfill my dreams", says Li Chao, for whom expensive hobbies like motor racing are no longer out of reach. He thinks nothing of splashing out hundreds of thousands of dollars on glamorous supercars and is unapologetic about his growing wealth. After all, he says, he has earned it. Li represents a new generation of pioneering 'red capitalists', many of them the children of Communist Party officials. Flamboyant, accustomed to success and able to spend more money in one luxury evening in Shanghai or Beijing than others can earn in a year, they are fast becoming the embodiment of the modern Chinese dream. Others, like the real estate developer Wang Dafu, were born into poverty, but have been equally able to build vast fortunes in a country with growth rates that other nations can only dream of. "When I started working I sometimes couldn't afford a beer and a bowl of noodles,” he says. Now, with his personal wealth estimated at two-thirds of a billion dollars, he could spend the equivalent of 10,000 bowls of noodles on the interior design of his yacht and barely dent his bank account. It is not surprising that with more and more people splashing the cash, the Chinese auto market is now the largest in the world, its luxury goods market is huge and its art market is booming. This is life - albeit for a privileged minority - in the new China and it is one focused on what many observers now see as an increasingly hollow slogan: "Socialism with Chinese characteristics". Yet those who run the country clearly do not appreciate the irony. Take the incomes of the members of the People's Congress, the official parliament, which meets once a year. The 70 richest members collectively have assets worth over $85bn. This compares favourably to the relatively meagre $5.5bn available to the 70 richest members of Congress in Washington DC. Yet Wu Renbao, the former party boss of Huaxi, sees no contradiction. “Whatever the ideology - the main thing is that we become rich together," he says. In other words, everyone has an equal opportunity to benefit; all they have to do is work hard. But not everyone is happy. Economist Zhang Hongliang is an unreconstructed leftist, who warns that China’s leadership may come to rue its love affair with profit. "Directors of companies shouldn’t be party secretaries. It should be the proletariat providing the secretaries and the directors representing the capitalists. When a person takes on those two roles, one thing is clear: the Communist Party is nothing but a capitalist party through and through," Zhang says. This revealing film from Jörg Winter and ORF looks at some of the possible consequences of China’s growing love affair with money and wonders what has happened to the Marxist principles that the nation once paid homage to.