There's probably no better all around special feature reporter than Koppel, and his expertise is probably no better shown to advantage than in the four episodes that comprise this documentary that first aired on Discovery Channel. As he discusses in the extra feature, a bonus 30 minute interview held in his Maryland home, Koppel has been tied to China both personally and professionally for over 40 years. His experience with the vast country predated his journey there with Nixon by several years, his son was born in Hong Kong, and his daughter Andrea, becoming a reporter and producer of some note herself, manned CNN's China Bureau for several years.

The People's Republic of Capitalism plays to Koppel's strengths, his inerrant ability to find perfect and personal examples of vast issues and frankly arcane theories (does anybody really understand "macroeconomics"?). In the first episode, for example, Koppel traces the circuitous connections between Wal-Mart, Briggs and Stratton and Ethan Allen furniture, both stateside and in China itself. We see displaced American workers who nonetheless extol the virtues of the "pay less" mentality at Sam Walton's superstore, even after being told that their consumerism there probably helped lead to their joblessness. Koppel and his research team find one perfectly amazing example, as an ornate Ethan Allen couch, partially assembled in both the United States and China, literally touches several lives on both sides of the ocean, and Koppel is there at every turn interviewing people.

Some of the other folks he comes across have sadder stories, as a rural woman married to an alcoholic farmer, a woman who is sending her only daughter away to the "big city" (the entire documentary is centered around the Chinese megalopolis Chonqing) for schooling, against her husband's wishes. The woman makes a few dollars a week transporting hundreds of pounds of crops on her back to market, and the school ends up costing her about half of that.

In another episode, Koppel examines the kind of funny explosion of cars in inner city China, a country long associated with the bicycle. We see scores of fender benders and follow a portable Liberty Mutual van that actually goes to the accident scene and offers settlements right there. It's American capitalism in a totally different guise, and it's fascinating to watch. (Some fender benders are "settled" with a quick and discreet payoff between the parties, without even any insurance folks getting involved). This shows off China's burgeoning technological prowess commingling with a longheld, more agrarian face-to-face ethos and it's frankly something that some Americans could learn from. Even what looks to be a pretty bad rollover accident leaves the relatively unharmed occupants of the vehicles not threatening any lawsuits.

At times Koppel is a bit too "cute" for his own good, as in the quick cutting of an assembly line's drudgery set to Koppel's ever hastening repeated voiceover "snap it on, plug it in, check it out, send it off." And in another moment, when Koppel is interviewing a Chinese-American AIDS researcher now in China away from his family, I had to wonder if it was mere coincidence that Koppel's deep blue dress shirt was exactly (and I mean exactly) the same shade as the backlit beakers and other pharmaceutical paraphernalia in the background. But these are passing qualms in what really is a brilliantly written and shot piece, one that manages to weave together so many disparate strands that it will probably have a lot of viewers rethinking their own biases about a global economy that, like it or not, is already here and is obviously here to stay.

As Koppel mentions in the bonus interview, it's staggering to think that a mere 40 years ago there was virtually no contact between China and the United States. Koppel recounts having to wheel a huge van equipped with a portable antenna to which he would hook up a television in order to monitor mainland broadcasts back in the late 1960s. It was the only way he could glean information about what was actually going on there (or at least what the Communist Government wanted broadcast). Since Nixon's epochal trip there, markets have opened and our economic fates have been merged as probably neither Nixon nor Mao ever envisioned. With China now holding huge amounts of American debt, we seem to be on the verge of another economic precipice with perhaps no clear markers to delineate the way forward. Koppel makes a compelling case that continued contact, despite its travails on both sides, is the only rational approach. The People's Republic of Capitalism is a thoroughly engaging course showing what that engagement has meant already, and what it may portend for all of our futures.

The Blu-ray

Video:
This is a very sharp looking BD indeed, with an enhanced 1.78:1 OAR in an AVC encode. Colors are natural and very well saturated (not just Koppel's beautiful blue shirt), and fine line detail is astounding at times, not the least of which is the supercool opening montage made out of rotoscoped versions of Chinese paper money. My one issue is that a lot of the scenery is of the big city variety; I would have loved to have seen a little more of China's very unique and lovely rural areas.

Sound:
The DD 5.1 mix doesn't really have a chance to show off its wares all that much, though in the techno music underscore that augments the opening, and in several cityscape ambient moments, the surround channels are utilized quite effectively. For a piece that is largely Koppel's voice, fidelity and range are both topnotch. There's also a DD 2.0 mix which is perfectly fine, as well as English SDH subtitles.

Extras:
A nice bonus interview with Koppel runs about 30 minutes. He does tend to talk on (and on and on), but he's usually quite interesting and is obviously incredibly well-versed in the subject matter. It seems like this double BD sure could have used some other extras, though.

Final Thoughts:
The People's Republic of Capitalism is a near perfect snapshot of our intertwined economies circa 2007-08. Things have already changed quite a bit since then, but the fundamentals that are discussed in this riveting piece need to be understod by anyone wondering what sort of world they're bestowing to their children. Highly recommended.

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"G-d made stars galore" & "Hey, what kind of a crappy fortune is this?" ZMK, modern prophet