RT PRESENTS: EXCLUSIVE INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE OF JOHN PILGER’S DOC ON US-CHINA TENSIONS
MOSCOW, DECEMBER 9, 2016 – RT’s documentary channel, RTDoc, will air the exclusive international television premiere of The Coming War on China – the latest documentary from award-winning journalist and acclaimed filmmaker John Pilger.
In his most recent film, Pilger explores the US’ military buildup in the Pacific and the probability that a nuclear war could break out in the region in the future.
John Pilger is the winner of an Emmy and a Peabody Award, as well as the Grierson Trust Award, which is granted by the British Academy for Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) for excellence in journalism. He is also a two-time recipient of both the Journalist of the Year Award in Britain and the United Nations’ Media Peace Prize in Australia. Pilger has achieved worldwide recognition for reporting on controversial subjects in all corners of the globe, as well as for his in-depth documentary work. He has produced films such as Nicaragua – A Nation’s Right to Survive and The War You Don’t See about the media’s role in modern history’s most significant wars.
The Coming War on China was filmed over two years in Japan, Korea, China, the United States, and on the Marshall Islands. Pilger explains the issue he aimed to highlight the film as follows: “There are 400 U.S. bases encircling China. They start in Australia. They go through the Pacific. They go up through Japan, Korea, across Eurasia. It’s like a giant noose around China – missiles, warships, low draft warships, which can approach China just outside Chinese waters. The provocation of China that has gone on in the last five, six years, has been extreme, to the point where China itself has changed its nuclear weapons policy. It’s gone from low alert to high alert. It’s developed the kind of long-range missiles that will target the US Navy. I mean, it is extraordinary. It’s not only a blockade; it’s a blackout.”
Convinced that the American military bases surrounding China pose a major risk, Pilger notes: “What we’re talking about here, with this blockade of China, is really a nuclear threat. We’re back at the few minutes to midnight in terms of the possibility, the prospect, of nuclear war, in which the Pentagon’s law of war manual now says, it’s okay, in effect, to use nuclear weapons. So, we have the provocation of the newest major nuclear power.”
RT hosted a special closed screening of The Coming War on China on November 29th in London, preceded by a Q&A about the film with Afshin Rattansi, host of RT’s Going Underground.
Watch the film on the RTDoc Channel on December 9th.
READ MORE: US provoking China into nuclear war? RT to air new Pilger documentary
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