采訪英文原稿

Guancha Media：What is the most impressive thing in your mind when you think of the documentary you made this time?

Malcolm Clarke：Um,impressive. In on one level, the most impressive thing was actually getting into Wuhan. They were kicking everyone else out. For that, I owe a great debt to our Chinese production team. Because they they managed to persuade whoever you have to persuade at a very high level that we wanted to do something which would tell the truth about exactly what was happening in the city at a time of great crisis,when pretty much every journalistic organ in the world, CNN, the Times of London, the Guardian, New York times , Los Angeles Times, they were all, to various degrees,holding China responsible for unleashing a global death threat. And that seemed to us to be rather unfair and implausible. There needed to be a huge amount of trust to allow westerners to go in. And try to find out the truth. And so that was the biggest that was very impressive achievement, which was not my achievement.

When we got there, the most impressive thing was to see how in absolute 180 degree contrast it was in terms of the way the Chinese people responded in comparison to westerners. The degree of trust that Chinese people had in their government...I mean everyone probably complained, nobody wants to be locked in their apartment for 76 days. Who can blame them? But They did it. And they did it because they were told it was in their best interest and they believed the government. That was very impressive because in the west, nobody believes the government. So the notion that a city of 11 million people reluctantly but with a degree of kind of trust which was impossible to find in the west, they walked into their apartments and closed the doors and stayed there, until the medics told them it was safe to come out. And that was remarkable.

Guancha Media：What feedback have you received after making the document from both the Chinese side and the western side?

Malcolm Clarke：You're asking me a question that I can only partially answer because the film has not been released yet. It's almost finished. Normally before we have a picture-lock we would always organize one or two internal screenings and invite a few trusted friends for their feedback. Same this time.

Everyone who has seen it and I say this with a clear conscience, everyone who has seen it, it's shocked by the candor of the Chinese people in the movie, the honesty of the Chinese people in the movie， and really moved, sometimes to tears by the extraordinary situations that we were lucky enough to film, because we were filming people dying in the ICU every day, we were filming 18-year-old, 20-year-old, 22-year-old nurses, risking their lives. Every day. And the stakes was so high. It was so incredibly dangerous. Nobody really understood what this virus was capable of, how toxic it was, how many people it would kill if it was not controlled quickly.

The overall impression is that the film is emotionally exhausting, because one thing that I say, many times in many interviews, that is a quote from William Shakespeare, who wrote “a picture is worth 1,000 words”. You can describe something in the journalistic article in a story, but to actually see it happen in front of you, and to see the pain, the joy, the elation or the sadness of the tragedy in front of you, is on a different level of kind of emotional intensity. And this film is a very emotionally intense film. But actually, it has a happy ending, because after 76 days, Wuhan went back to business as usual, the only place in the world that did.

Guancha Media：The next question. We've heard different stories from the Chinese side and western side about Wuhan fighting the coronavirus. So what kind of story this documentary wanted to delivery to the whole world?

Malcolm Clarke：I don't really think it's a story. It's the truth. All we did was asking many people who were in Wuhan to describe their experience. There were some people who were very angry about what had happened. There were some people who were very frightened. We met people who I would absolutely regard and describe as heroes，who took risks with their own lives to treat other people, and to help other people.

But I think the overwhelming “take-away” of this movie, is that China was caught off guard with a natural disaster of huge proportions. All this nonsense about being a virus created in a laboratory and about human error and man-made a. It's nonsense. This was a natural disaster which could have occurred anywhere on the planet. Ebola happened in Africa, I we know, we know this. And then and, when it does, it's a race against time to try and scientifically contain it. China mapped the virus within 2 weeks, an entire city was locked down, unprecedented in human history. It

contained the virus in 2 months. There were mistakes made, but the mistakes were made over a 3.5-week period. There were mistakes made in America over one year period. In the UK, over one year period. China,in this particular instance, was an amazing success story, and the application of both state capacity, throwing 80000 people into Wuhan and saying fix this problem, the application of organization and bravery and responsibility on the part of the Chinese people saved China. It's actually saved Wuhan. Wuhan could have been experienced an absolute disaster. It didn't happen because of the decisiveness of the Chinese government who made hard decisions fast.

Guancha Media：As Chinese media， we've seen how western medias reporting Wuhan as it’s in combat with the virus. It seems that they are intentionally rejecting twisting the fact.

Malcolm Clarke：Of course, twisting the facts. I mean, Absolutely disgrace. Well, it makes me ashamed to be western because I I'm a journalist. Somewhat, I'm a filmmaker mostly, but I was trained as a journalist at the BBC and ABC News in New York. And I know the trick you can play as a journalist. I know the way you can bend the facts and bend the truth, and have me say something which is exactly the opposite of what I just said by the way it's edited and presented, I know all those tricks. But we're playing with great stakes here. We have to be responsible. And we have to tell the truth and we have to give credit where credit is due. Now you may not like China because of other things that it does,other things that are very controversial,like intellectual property theft for example, currency manipulation, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, name your kind of hot button issue. But the point is that you went on all those things, you have to examine them on the face of the fact and you have to be honest about them.

And on the facts of Wuhan, China did something unprecedented in human history. I've lived in China for the last year，safe，sound，eating in restaurants，going to movie，walking around the town, while my family, which now settles in Canada, is locked down still can't get out of the house.

Why? Because somebody in Beijing acted responsibly. All that's to me, that's the glory of China. That it can deploy those resources and that he can act with great speed and with great responsibility, and that its people follow it, because they feel safe and they feel secure. They have confidence in their government. That's really unusual.

Guancha Media：The situation that China faces right now is that, the western narrative is taking the high ground, and the world speaks English. From your point of view, how should Chinese deliver the truth to the world outside, do you think？

Malcolm Clarke：I think China has to be a little bit more honest about its shortcomings, about the things that are not great in China and there's a lot of them. I think we need to see the Chinese government and the Chinese media as being not a propaganda，but a truth machine. And the problem is that, the Chinese government, and maybe the some Chinese institutions, I feel, are unnecessarily insecure about that position visavis the west. I think they need, as I said, in my speech, I'd like to see China being more confident and more confrontational, but not in a not in an angry way, just calling the facts out.“That's not true. This is true,make up your own mind.”

China has so much to be proud of.And this renaissance in the last 40 years is just like mind boggling to anybody in the west, that unfortunately frightens people in the west. We don't think this is great that China's become a kind of a modern superpower. We think it's scary, and possibly dangerous. So that because we've been used to being number one for so long. So suddenly, as I said in my speech, there's a new kid in the sandbox. He's kicking sand in our faces and. We don't like it, but they're gonna have to get used to it, because China's not going to go away.

I think we have to accept the new reality of the fact that there is a new superpower which has a very different way of doing things that we don't like, but it's their way and we have to respect it and we have to get along and all the places that we can get along, like climate change for example like, combating international terrorism, there are so many places where China and the west can coexist and help each other and agree that we are going to have differences.I mean you can be married to someone and have differences. You don't agree about everything,it doesn't mean you get a divorce, it just means that you have to manage your differences.

So I feel still, despite the fact that this is an ugly period. But that's because we are inheriting the toxicity of the trump administration, a man who was incapable of telling the truth or walking in a straight line. He was using China as the scapegoat, as the whipping boy for anything that went wrong in the west. And unfortunately, he had a lot of support, and a lot of people believed him.

Guancha Media：Your documentary Better Angels released on 2019. It tells stories about how beneficial it could be to both Chinese and American people when these two big countries cooperated. From your observation, what has been changed in the China-US relationship？

Malcolm Clarke：Obviously，Trump changed everything and we started making Better Angels when trump was campaigning. We knew that we were in as filmmakers a rough ride, because he was changing the narrative. He wasn't interested in competition in complementary values, he was interested in zero sum competition. And it was them or us. From his perspective, America wanted it to be them who were top dog. China was demonized frankly. And the detritus of that, the fallout of that, 4 years of toxic demonization of China was exactly what we saw in Atlanta several days ago when eight Asians and who weren't even all Chinese—because many people in the United States can't tell the difference between a Thai, a Korean and a Chinese—it doesn't matter. It's just you’re all Asian. There's that level of discrimination and violence against Asians and it's just awful. That has to change.

So that narrative can only really change if people recognize that China is not a threat, that it can be an ally, and that the Chinese people love, hate, bleed, die, get the virus, just like you do, that we're all part of a kind of common wealth. That's the only way that's going to take decades, I think. But the world is changing and in the future, I hope that there will be more of a balance between those two great nations.

Guancha Media：We've seen the Chinese and US leaders meeting each other in Alaska in these 2 days and their “word attack” to each other is, fierce. It seems that Biden administration has taken the legacy of Donald Trump and adopted aggressive attitude towards China. So when US politicians have determined to be aggressive against China, what do you think can promote this relationship?

Malcolm Clarke：First of all, I actually don't agree that Biden administration and the trump administration are similar. I do think that they want to send a message domestically of continuity. I don't think it's prudent politically for Biden to say everything trump told you was a lie, and I'm going to do something different. You have to educate your electorate. And if the electorate suddenly believes that China is a monster, you can't suddenly say no, China's not a monster, China's a fairy who was going to grant all your wishes. Nobody's going to believe that.

But I think behind the administration, underneath the administration, there are scholars on the Democratic side who have a much more realistic view of what China can be to America. And I think 4 years from now, it will be quite different, but it needs to evolve. And personally, I know Blinken a little bit and I don't think he's the right guy. He's smart, but he's not as smart as he thinks he is. I think he mishandled Alaska. Frankly, I think there was a certain level of condescension and arrogance on the American side. But China dealt with it, China did not lose its temper. China just said “We aren't gonna do that, Look me in the eye and talk to me as an equal.”

Guancha Media：We fight back with dignity.

Malcolm Clarke：Yes，and I think that's exactly the right note. I think the west has to start dealing with the real politic of China. China is not going away. It's going more powerful, wealthier. There's a budgeting middle class,100 million people pulled out of poverty, which is extraordinary statistic. There's universal literacy. There's more patents being registered in China than in the west. This country is here to stay front and central on the world stage.

We have to start to understand it. And how we do that? I think at this, there's not an awful lot of huge political gestures that can be made. But if we can for example stop all these restrictions that stop Chinese people going to America to learn and that stop American people from coming to China to learn, because this next generation of diplomats need to start somewhere. They need to start teaching in Junior high schools in China, and learning who the Chinese people are so that they can one day be the secretary of state.

So I think we can stop accusing Confucius institutes of being dangerous “5th column”, “the seeds of espionage”, which is a nonsense anyway. I think we need to get more Americans into China，we need to get more Chinese into America, and then slowly build on those very fragile foundations, because the relationship right now is effectively broken.

Guancha Media：For the last question, do you have any specific words for Chinese people and American people, respectively?

Malcolm Clarke：I think I don't want to just say something which is a kind of a bromide, which is just silly，“Let's all get on. Hold hands together.” What I would say is that there's been a tremendous amount of work and time and money spent to divide American people from Chinese people. There has been an agenda which has been pursued at great expense to have Americans believe the Chinese want to eat their lunch. And it's nonsense. I think certainly Americans need not to accept easy criticisms and easy propagandistic views of China without seriously examining their own truth for themselves. Don't take anything that anyone tells you about China at face value. Because it's probably not true.

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