But you can go home again, it appears. When I caught up with Woo for a few minutes on the phone recently, the 63-year-old action legend was partway through a whirlwind American tour to promote a film he calls the biggest and most ambitious he's ever done -- a massively-scaled, visually spectacular historical epic called "Red Cliff" that was entirely conceived, financed and made in China. He was also serving as a de facto spokesman for China's burgeoning campaign to build a new global film industry that can compete on equal terms with both Hollywood and Bollywood. Yeah, if the suits in west L.A. haven't made the logical deduction yet, they might make it now: Chinawood is coming, and it's going to be a very big deal.

This isn't an entirely new phenomenon, of course. From "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" to "Hero" to "Curse of the Golden Flower," productions financed or co-financed by China's film industry have occasionally combined big budgets with artistic vision and become hits on a global scale. But "Red Cliff" has definitely kicked the game up a notch, and you have to wonder whether veteran Chinese filmmakers like Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou are feeling disrespected. Woo spends a dozen years in L.A. living the high life with Tom Cruise and Nic Cage while they're making serious films, and then he gets to come back and become a huge national hero. 

After protracted discussions with Chinese authorities, Woo got near-total carte blanche to come home and make this long-contemplated dream project, one for which Hollywood producers had displayed little enthusiasm. In the process, Woo -- a devout Christian who is widely assumed to be anti-Communist -- has clearly been tasked with driving Chinese cinema in a more commercial direction. "I have learned so much from Hollywood," Woo told me, "and I thought it was about time to bring what I have learned in Hollywood back to Asia. There are so many young and talented filmmakers in China. I think it's great for them to have the chance to work on a big-budget, Hollywood-type movie. To learn some new spirit, you might say."

Whether Chinese film really needs an injection of Hollywood's spirit is very much open to debate, but the Chinese authorities, like Woo himself, are thinking big. Woo's grandiose retelling of the 208 A.D. Battle of Red Cliffs, between Han Empire forces and the rebellious kingdoms to the west and south -- a legendary conflict as well-known to Asians as the Trojan War is to Westerners -- veers, like most of his films, from the portentous to the breathtaking (and is often both at the same time). It combines Asian action cinema and Hollywood-style CGI effects in truly dazzling fashion and on a scale never seen before. And it's become the biggest-grossing release in Chinese history (breaking the record previously held by "Titanic"), and a record-breaker in several other Asian countries as well.

Unfortunately, American moviegoers will only see a sliced-'n'-diced version of "Red Cliff," edited down from the two-part, five-hour opus that played in Asian markets to a single, 148-minute release stitched together with voiceover narration and explanatory on-screen titles. This only drives home the point that "Red Cliff" wasn't made for Americans; its release here by Magnet, a genre-oriented offshoot of Magnolia Pictures, is almost an afterthought by comparison. (Woo says the full-length Asian version will eventually be released here on DVD; you can probably find it now, if you know where to look.)

Despite the occasional clunkiness of the foreshortened "Red Cliff" and its ancient-world setting, it's unmistakably a John Woo movie. (I haven't seen the full-length version.) It's built around patterns of male friendship and enmity, a deadly feud over a beautiful woman who represents the domestic bliss Woo's violent heroes always yearn for, and three or four of the most elaborate action sequences ever filmed. (Yes, Woo devotees, there are still doves. Lots and lots of doves!)

Woo says the climactic, three-stage naval battle that lends the movie its name involved building two dozen or so full-size wooden warships, creating many more digitally, and shooting with four different filmmaking crews: a first unit to capture the principal action, a second unit, a stunt unit and a special-effects unit. "We had to shoot all kinds of live-action scenes while the ships were actually on fire," he laughed. "We CG'd the rest of the ships and the rest of the fire, but a lot of it is real. And we were shooting against bad weather. It was extremely cold and we were facing high winds. We had to get creative in every shot. This was definitely the biggest movie, and the toughest movie, I've ever tried to do."

Given that the historical battle of Red Cliffs took place 1,800 years ago, and the best-known account is a fictionalized version written in the 13th century, more than a millennium later, Woo and his writing team felt free to simplify and amplify the story as they see fit. Three of Asia's biggest male stars play the principal roles: Tony Leung plays Zhou Yu, the rebel hero who joins forces with Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a rival kingdom's military strategist, to confront the massively superior forces of Prime Minister Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi), a nefarious schemer who has convinced the Han Emperor to go to war.

There are dozens of other characters in the mix, but none are as memorable as the ethereal Xiao Qiao (Taiwanese supermodel Chiling Lin), who is married to Zhou Yu but, of course, coveted by the evil Cao Cao, whose uncontrollable desire for her will prove to be a near-fatal failing. (No one is ever likely to accuse Woo of being a feminist filmmaker. His women come in two flavors: lovely and mysterious or tomboyish and spunky.)

Despite the wide variety of fantastical violence depicted in "Red Cliff," Woo insists he has stayed true to his code of never glorifying killing in the service of entertainment. "It's very much an entertaining film, but I think there's a human story in there too, that's important for me to tell," he said. "It's a war movie, and I like to stress that in war there are no winners. I think we have an antiwar message in there. As I'm sure you can see, I emphasize that when people get shot, there is death and tears. I think that's the way to send the right message."

Woo was able to borrow up to 1,500 soldiers from the Chinese army to serve as extras in the battle scenes and work on building sets, which gives you some idea how much national pride became officially invested in this prodigal son's homecoming. For his part, Woo describes working in his native country after all these years as "a dream come true." (He was born in Guangzhou, in southern China, and moved to Hong Kong as a child around the time the Communists came to power.)

 "I've wanted to make this movie for more than 20 years," he said. "I always dreamed about making a movie like 'Lawrence of Arabia' or 'Spartacus' or 'Seven Samurai' -- that scale of movie. And I really love this part of history. This is the most famous battle in Chinese history. Anybody who grew up in China knows this story. The Japanese know it, the Koreans know it, all the other Asian countries know this story."

Seeing the audience reaction in China and other East Asian countries, says Woo, made him see the potential of a Hollywood-scale Chinese film industry. "The movie was so successful in China and Japan and that was very, very gratifying," he said. "The audience really felt so much excitement about the movie. Most Asian audiences are used to watching big Hollywood movies, which honestly are much higher quality, with the heroes and the big stars. But a movie like 'Red Cliff' has really changed their minds. It's a movie on the Hollywood scale that has so much of the Asian spirit. It has drawn the Asian audience back to the movie theater. We will have to see what happens, but I think the film industry in China will grow very fast, very fast. People in China really want to watch this kind of movie."

"Red Cliff" is now playing in New York, and opens Nov. 25 in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Calif., Seattle and Washington; Dec. 4 in Honolulu, Monterey, Calif., Sacramento, Calif., and Santa Cruz, Calif.; and Dec. 11 in Baltimore, Cleveland, Hartford, Conn., Indianapolis, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Memphis St. Louis, San Antonio, Texas, and Santa Fe, N.M., with more cities to follow. Also available on-demand via many cable-TV systems.

 

 

This is wishful thinking. True, the Chinese market is huge and growing fast. By 2009, China was second only to the U.S. in computer sales, with a larger proportion of first-time buyers. It already had more cellphone users. And excluding SUVs, last year Chinese consumers bought as many cars as Americans (as recently as 2006, Americans bought twice as many).

Even as the U.S. government was bailing out General Motors and Chrysler, the two firms' sales in China were soaring; GM's sales there are almost 50 percent higher this year than last. Procter & Gamble is so well-established in China that many Chinese think its products (such as green-tea-flavored Crest toothpaste) are Chinese brands. If the Chinese economy continues to grow at or near its current rate and the benefits of that growth trickle down to 1.3 billion Chinese consumers, the country would become the largest shopping bazaar in the history of the world. They'll be driving over a billion cars and will be the world's biggest purchasers of household electronics, clothing, appliances and almost everything else produced on the planet.

So this will mean millions of American export jobs, right? No.

In fact China is heading in the opposite direction of "rebalancing." Its productive capacity keeps soaring, but Chinese consumers are taking home a shrinking proportion of the total economy. Last year, personal consumption in China amounted to only 35 percent of the Chinese economy; 10 years ago consumption was almost 50 percent. Capital investment, by contrast, rose to 44 percent from 35 percent over the decade.

China's capital spending is on the way to exceeding that of the U.S., but its consumer spending is barely a sixth as large. Chinese companies are plowing their rising profits back into more productive capacity -- additional factories, more equipment, new technologies. China's massive $600 billion stimulus package has been directed at further enlarging China's productive capacity rather than consumption. So where will this productive capacity go if not to Chinese consumers? Net exports to other nations, especially the U.S. and Europe.

Many explanations have been offered for the parsimony of Chinese consumers. Social safety-nets are still inadequate, so Chinese families have to cover the costs of health care, education and retirement. Young Chinese men outnumber young Chinese women by a wide margin, so households with sons have to accumulate and save enough assets to compete in the marriage market. Chinese society is aging quickly because the government has kept a tight lid on population growth for three decades, with the result that households are supporting lots of elderly dependents.

But the larger explanation for Chinese frugality is that the nation is oriented to production, not consumption. China wants to become the world's preeminent producer nation. It also wants to take the lead in the production of advanced technologies. The U.S. would like to retain the lead, but our economy is oriented to consumption rather than production.

Deep down inside the cerebral cortex of our national consciousness we assume that the basic purpose of an economy is to provide more opportunities to consume. We grudgingly support government efforts to rebuild our infrastructure. We want our companies to invest in new equipment and technologies but also want them to pay generous dividends. We approve of government investments in basic research and development, but mainly for the purpose of making the nation more secure through advanced military technologies. (We regard spillovers to the private sector as incidental.)

China's industrial and technological policy is unapologetically direct. It especially wants America's know-how, and the best way to capture know-how is to get it firsthand. So China continues to condition many sales by U.S. and foreign companies on production in China -- often in joint ventures with Chinese companies.

American firms are now helping China build a "smart" infrastructure, tackle pollution with clean technologies, develop a new generation of photovoltaics and wind turbines, find new applications for nanotechnologies, and build commercial jets and jet engines. GM recently announced it was planning to make a new subcompact in China designed and developed primarily by the Pan-Asia Technical Automotive Center, a joint venture between GM and SAIC Motor in Shanghai. General Electric is producing wind turbine components in China. Earlier this month, Massachusetts-based Evergreen Solar announced it will be moving its solar panel production to China.

The Chinese government also wants to create more jobs in China, and it will continue to rely on exports. Each year, tens of millions of poor Chinese pour into large cities from the countryside in pursuit of better-paying work. If they don't find it, China risks riots and other upheaval. Massive disorder is one of the greatest risks facing China's governing elite. That elite would much rather create export jobs, even at the cost of subsidizing foreign buyers, than allow the yuan to rise and thereby risk job shortages at home.

To this extent, China's export policy is really a social policy, designed to maintain order. Despite the Obama administration's entreaties, China will continue to peg the yuan to the dollar -- when the dollar drops, selling yuan in the foreign-exchange market and adding to its pile of foreign assets in order to maintain the yuan's fixed relation to the dollar. This is costly to China, of course, but for the purposes of industrial and social policy, China figures the cost is worth it.

The dirty little secret on both sides of the Pacific is that both America and China are capable of producing far more than their own consumers are capable of buying. In the U.S., the root of the problem is a growing share of total income going to the richest Americans, leaving the middle class with relatively less purchasing power unless they go deep into debt. Inequality is also widening in China, but the problem there is a declining share of the fruits of economic growth going to average Chinese and an increasing share going to capital investment.

Both societies are threatened by the disconnect between production and consumption. In China, the threat is civil unrest. In the U.S., it's a prolonged jobs and earnings recession that, when combined with widening inequality, could create political backlash.

As one might guess, in 1970, the center of Co2 emissions gravity was located between Europe and the United States, just off the coast of Iceland. Since then it has moved steadily to the east, toward Asia. More troublingly, the rate at which greenhouse gas emissions are moving is faster than the rate at which the center of GDP growth is moving, suggesting that "Asian production is getting more CO2 intensive than Western production." That's not good news, because it means that industrial production is getting less efficient and worse for the environment as it migrates to Asia.

A side note: The satellite photos of the globe with their little pink and yellow balloons superimposed on the planet emphasize, quite strongly, the truth of North-South relations, at least insofar as industrial production is concerned. Because the center of gravity may be moving on the East-West axis at a brisk pace, but it's going absolutely nowhere on the North-South axis. If I lived in the South, I'd know whom to blame for climate change.

Low-cost netbooks have been selling at a rate of 200,000 to 300,000 a month all year in China, according to China Daily, although one analyst predicted that the "euphoria" would peter out toward the end of the year, as consumers start "to realize the limits of the products."

It's a tough market to get rich in -- netbooks use cheap, underpowered processors that don't allow for much profit per device, and the competition to bring new products to market is extraordinarily intense. Yesterday's netbook is today's paperweight. So while the sheer total of computer processors being shipped may be setting records, revenue is not. Still, while we wait and watch in the U.S. for indisputable signs that an economic recovery is under way, taking meager hope in such indicators as a slight uptick in temp hiring, the reports of the fast-growing Chinese consumer computer market are intriguing. If the netbook is an entry-level computing device, then there are millions of Chinese ready for an upgrade. That's good news for the semiconductor industry, the global economy and, naturally, Intel.

What does it mean for American jobs? Well, Intel is still building state-of-the-art semiconductor fabrication facilities in the U.S. So as long as Chinese computers continue to incorporate Intel CPUs, there should be a trickle-down benefit to to American workers from a booming domestic Chinese computer market. But we'll see how long that lasts.

So begins an investigation conducted by by India's Outlook magazine into a sticky labor issue. (Found via ChinaDigitalTimes.) Chinese construction companies contracted to build power plants and steel mills and other big infrastructural projects in India are importing as many as 25,000 Chinese laborers to do much of the work -- and skirting or outright disobeying Indian visa rules that are supposed to only allow entry to "skilled workers."

American technology professionals who look askance at Indian H1B visa immigrants as unfair, low-wage competition might want to hold off on indulging in their schadenfreude. The weird twist to this story is that, according to Indian workers, the Chinese workers get paid wages far higher than their Indian counterparts. So it's not exactly your standard case of cheap foreign labor exploitation.

However, Outlook did gain access into the Chinese walled residential compound. Built like a military base, it had air-conditioned barracks and amenities like a basketball court, a Chinese canteen and cable TV, among other facilities the Indian workers couldn't possibly dream of. As an Indian worker put it, "The Chinese get rum bottles, water bottles and we don't even have a tubewell." The compound is constantly guarded given the tensions with the locals.

Clearly, the Chinese, despite being famous for cheap products, do not come cheap. But the Indian management isn't complaining. R.S. Singh refused to divulge financial details but says the Chinese are very "cost-effective". "They'll set up this plant in 15 months whereas a plant of a similar nature would take an Indian enterprise eight years," he says. D.S. Rajan, director, Centre for China Studies, Chennai, agrees on that point. "They behave very well collectively with an inclination to complete projects in time. Indians tend to be more individualistic."

I suppose an economist could make a case that the overall welfare of the Indian people will rise faster than it would have otherwise if Chinese laborers build new roads and power plants and airports at an accelerated pace. But as we know from the U.S. example, arguments about the impact of outsourcing or illegal immigration on our collective prosperity tend not to make much of an impact on the individual who has been downsized or otherwise lost out competing in the job market with foreign imports.

But is international labour mobility something to be shunned? Not at the cost of resentment at home, says Rajan. "At no point should the locals feel that outsiders are taking away their jobs," he says.

OK...now you can plug in your schadenfreude meters.