Film Review: Comrades

Directed by Edward Wong
Review by Kye Leung
posted April 7, 2001

Comrades is the story of two men who never met each other except in director Edward Wong's imagination. Featuring interviews and historical footage, Wong weaves a story of two men who each tried to change the world they lived in. We meet the director's father. It is 1949 and China is unified as the People's Republic of China.

Ending a century of conflict, the people of China looked forward to peace and stability. The past one hundred years had been chaotic. Imperialist expansion and demand for new markets by capitalist nations in China led to two Opium Wars (1839, 1856). China's defeat by Britain, a small island nation, highlighted the ineptness of the feudal bureaucracy and the monarchy government. The humiliation suffered at the hands of European powers spurred rebellions in China, especially the Nien (1853-1868) and Taipings (1850-64). Mostly a peasant movement, the Taipings was led by a charismatic man who claimed to be the brother of Jesus and was brought to this world to rid the corrupt monarchy and the European imperialists. In 1900, another large peasant movement emerged, the Boxer Rebellion, also known as Yi Ho Tuan or I Wor Kuen. Sun Yat-sen, the father of modern Chinese republic, established a coalition government in 1911 known as the Kuomintang or Nationalist Party, effectively ending three hundred years of Manchu monarchy.

The various factions that comprised the Kuomintang splintered between the reactionary forces who were intent on preserving the feudal order and the monarchy, and progressive forces who wanted a democratic republic. Within the ranks of the Kuomintang were communists who were actively organizing the growing Chinese proletariat in urban cities and leading union strikes. After pacifying surrounding areas, the Kuomintang led by the conservative Chiang Kai-sek purged the communists from the party and attacked them in what is known as the Shanghai Massacre. Tens of thousands of leftist and communist sympathizers were killed. The sociologist Karl Marx taught, history is a struggle between classes. The communists saw themselves as successors to the Taipings and Boxers revolutions. As dialectical materialists, the communists believed that history is a contradiction between the forces of the ruling class and the exploited and oppressed. In China, the Koumingtang was revolutionary as an organization that overthrew feudalism in 1911, but later aligned themselves with the Chinese bourgeoisie, land-owners and foreign imperialism. Their antagonists, the Chinese Communist Party, organized the workers and peasants and thus set the stage for a civil war that lasted until 1949.

A recent high school graduate, Wong joins the People's Liberation Army. Deem untrustworthy because he has overseas relatives in Hong Kong, Wong is sent to the deserts of western China to serve the people. After seven years in a remote land, Wong yearns to go home and questions the leadership of the Party. The disasters of the Great Leap Forward left famine and poverty. Lying his way at the border, Wong runs away to Hong Kong, then a colony of Great Britain and eventually settles in the U.S.

The Other Red Guards

Comrades: A personal documentary about two men who took part in the violent socialist struggles of the mid-20th century. Yook Wong joined the Communist
Revolution that swept through China in 1949. A generation later, Alex Hing founded a group in San Francisco called the Red Guard, modeled after the communist youth group in China. In the end, the revolution didn't turn out the way anyone expected.

When You're Smiling: Gangs. Drug addiction. Suicides. This autobiographical film tells the tragic story of the children of Japanese American internees who silently assimilated into white America after WWII. It explores the
post-war, post-camp resettlement of Japanese Americans in Los Angeles.

More Info on topic:
History of the Red Guard Party
Article republished in AAMovement on the formation, theory and practice of the Red Guard Party.

Also check out Legacy to Liberation which has an in-depth interview with Alex Hing on his biography and the Red Guard Party.