A Tale of Two Halves

Topic Summary

The rise of China from an impoverished, stagnant nation to major economic super power in less than 30 years has been the cause of great concern to Western countries, particularly the US. American policymakers attempting to curb China’s growth cite the massive trade deficit between China and the US as an indicator that China uses unfair trade practices, such as currency manipulation, to “flood US markets with low-cost goods and to restrict US exports, and that such practices threaten American jobs, wages, and living standards.” In order to address the growing trade deficit Washington has put increasing pressure on Beijing to introduce exchange rate reforms. These reforms, Washington argues, will boost spending in China and increase its demand for imported goods which will in turn stabilise global trade imbalances. After initial reticence, China, in June 2010, took the first steps in breaking the yuan’s strict peg to the US dollar. While this move tempered fears of a trade war between the two nations, a subsequent statement issued by Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggested they would not bow to US pressure so easily: “The yuan appreciation will not solve the problem of US trade deficit, nor can it help improve employment, raise the low savings rate of US citizens and their excessive lending-based consumption…. China will reform its exchange-rate mechanism based on developments in the global economy and its own economic performance…. China hopes that U.S. politicians will “seriously consider” how to solve the structural problems in their economy and not blame others.”

The monumental trade deficit between China and the US is reminiscent of that which occurred between China and Britain in the late eighteenth century – the formative years of the second British Empire. In 1783 Britain, the reigning world superpower, had been dealt a great blow with the loss of its thirteen colonies in the American War of Independence. However, it quickly shifted its attentions to Asia and the Indian sub-continent. Tea, imported from China by the British East India Company, was being consumed in unprecedented quantities by the British. But China had little need of goods from Britain, and consequently large quantities of silver were flowing out of Britain and into China, causing an enormous trade imbalance. It was around this time that Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of India, came up with the idea of exporting Indian-grown opium to China. So successful was Hastings’ idea that within ten years the Chinese demand for opium had not only rectified the trade imbalance but the opium trade was also contributing to the wider economy of the British Empire. The human cost for China was immense and the Qing government moved quickly to outlaw the drug. In response Britain, who claimed that China’s Confucian-based trade laws were isolationist and exclusionary, declared war on China. The so-called Opium Wars which followed (1839-1842, 1856-1860) resulted not only in China’s defeat but also a profound social and economic upheaval as a result of it being forced to sign “unequal” treaties with a host of nations, including Britain, France and the USA.

Taking the form of an experimental film essay A Tale of Two Halves will look at the far reaching human consequences of Sino-Western trade imbalances from a very personal perspective. Jodi Smith, whose Chinese name is Mei Qian-Ling (Cantonese: Moy Sian-Ling), is the writer / director of A Tale of Two Halves. Her mother is Chinese, and her father is a European New Zealander. A self-described nomad , she lives between several Western (Britain, Australia, NZ) and Asian countries (China, Japan). The idea for A Tale of Two Halves came when she was writing a screenplay for the feature film Cross the Great Water, also on this web site. The screenplay’s subplot centres on the character of Hung who is based on Smith’s great-great grandfather. Born at the outbreak of the first Opium War in 1839 he left his home in Taishan, Guangdong at the age of 17 and travelled to the Australian gold rush where he endured deplorable living conditions and extreme racial prejudice. Like many other Chinese miners, he began to fear for his life. To escape, he stole an open 14-foot boot, sailed to Fiji through shark-infested waters and, against all odds, arrived one month later. He was the first Chinese man in Fiji where, after returning briefly to China to find a wife, he founded a large family from which Smith is descended. Eventually he returned to China, leaving his family in Fiji, and was never heard from again.

In April 2010 Smith travelled, with three of her uncles, to Taishan in search of her great-great grandfather’s village and to find out what had happened to him. Documenting the journey, Smith discovered her ancestral home – once the home of her great-great grandfather – in a tiny picturesque village untouched by the advances of modern China. Unable to understand why her great-great grandfather had left this idyllic place when it would’ve been known to him how harsh living conditions in the gold mines were, Smith was propelled to go in search for the reasons why he decided to leave. Her investigations kept bringing her back, time and again, to opium and the Opium Wars. What amazed Smith was that events this significant had been omitted not only from her British-based education, but also from the oral story-telling tradition of her Chinese family. Being both European and Chinese, Smith never felt like she ‘belonged’ in any place, and it is from this position – the place of the excluded middle, where she is neither one nor the other, but both at the same time – that she has conceived of A Tale of Two Halves.