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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

poverty, Chinese cinema, communist, poor, films

College

Humanities

Department

Asian and Near Eastern Languages

Abstract

After thirty-two years of Communist leadership, Chinese poverty levels reached an unprecedented high when in 1981, 85% of the People’s Republic of China lived in poverty1. In 2009, however, a report from the World Bank indicated that a mere 11.9% of China’s population fell below the poverty line.2 As poverty rates in China have fluctuated dramatically over the last sixty years, cultural, political, and societal perceptions of poverty have also changed. The current study analyzes perceptions of poverty, attributions for poverty, and solutions to poverty as depicted in Chinese cinema.

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