Changes in China: Koppel investigates
NEW YORK (AP) — The image of Ted Koppel interviewing world leaders is so ingrained that it feels odd to see him wearing a hardhat for a nervous trip into a Chinese coal mine, or sitting in a Chongqing karaoke bar where teenage girls are hired to entertain male customers.
Good thing he did, since the field work is what makes his four-part Discovery Channel series, The People’s Republic of Capitalism, so valuable. It premieres 10 p.m. Wednesday, with three other installments at the same time on successive nights.
The series illustrates how dramatically China has changed in ways obvious and not-so-obvious, from the jumble of new skyscrapers in a city that barely existed two decades ago, to the drag bars that operate despite official disapproval.
The opening images drive home the point that the U.S. and China’s economic interests are intertwined. A woman laid off at a Briggs Stratton plant in Missouri, wondering if she has the skills to find new work, contrasts with the company’s thriving plant in China. Discovery traces an Ethan Allen sofa from its assemblage in China, the upholstery done in the U.S. to its purchase by a rich couple in China.
You may not think you care much about what is happening in China, Koppel told The Associated Press. Let me tell you, what happens over there is going to make quite a difference with what is going to happen over here.
What is happening in the auto industry shows the complexity. China is adding 25,000 new vehicles a day, many to first-time buyers, and the country is embarked on a road-building binge similar to what happened in the United States during the Eisenhower administration.
More Buicks were sold in China last year than in the U.S., and Ford increased its sales in China last year by 30 percent, the Discovery series says. Liberty Mutual insurance is setting down roots in a society where accident payoffs are often done in cash, on the spot. Now some Chinese automakers are looking to export their cars to the U.S.
