The Coming War On China

★★★★ “John Pilger lays bare the historical horrors of the US military in the Pacific, exposing the paranoia and pre-emptive aggression of its semi-secret bases” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

A nuclear war between the United States and China is not only imaginable but a current ‘contingency’, says the Pentagon. John Pilger’s 60th film is his most urgent work to date and is both a warning and an inspiring story of resistance.

The Coming War on China, filmed over two years across five potential flashpoints in Asia and the Pacific, reveals the build-up to war on more than 400 US military bases that encircle China in a ‘perfect noose’. Using rare archive and remarkable interviews with witnesses, Pilger discloses America’s secret history in the region – the destruction wrought by the equivalent of one Hiroshima every day for 12 years, and the top secret ‘Project 4.1’ that made guinea pigs of the population of the Marshall Islands.

In key interviews from Pentagon war planners to members of China’s confident new political class – who rarely feature in Western reports, Pilger challenges the notion and propaganda of China as a new ‘enemy’.

Pilger says, “The aim of this film is to break a silence. A new cold war is under way along with the drumbeat to war, this time with the real possibility of nuclear weapons. ‘The Coming War’ is also a film about the human spirit and the rise of an extraordinary resistance in faraway places.“On the island of Okinawa, home to 32 US bases, the population is challenging the greatest military power in the world. On the Korean island of Jeju, villagers block the entrance to a new nuclear naval base, with its missiles aimed at China.”