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A whole new deference has now appeared in Western discussions of China. "A New China Rises," said a Time magazine headline in June 2005, as it noted, "The People's Republic has embraced the modern world as never before. Is that cause for celebration or anxiety?"; "Chinese Strength, U.S. Weakness," proclaimed the New York Times in the same month, while in July 2005 it asked, "Who's Afraid of China, Inc?" and described "The New Power Brokers, Born in China, Closing Deals for U.S. Firms" and "The China Syndrome on Wall Street." Meanwhile, China has developed a brilliant film culture, a cinema reminiscent of Italian Neo-Realism, which has brought the world a vision of both the marvelous expanse of Chinese streets and the internal pressures that drive Chinese lives. China's power surge and rapid development form one of the most exciting stories of the late twentieth century.

(An adaptation of a paper given at a conference held in June 2005 at Zhejiang U, Hangzhou, China. The authorities didn't allow the paper to be published as part of the proceedings of the conference & had blocked the Dissent Web site from reception in China; but before this issue went to press, that ban was lifted.) The 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations served as a powerful argument to a government that had been glad to see an end to Maoist authoritarianism, but not powerful enough for it to recognize its citizens as free people. Now, however, China is participating not only in the global economy, but also in globalized culture -- from art to clothes to digital cameras. It is argued that this would not have surprised or dismayed Karl Marx, who saw communism as a way to fulfill the promises of citizenship & human rights that had been broken by democracy. He wanted the masses to enjoy the benefits of modernization. It was modern capitalism that he rejected , since he saw capitalism as alienating people from themselves. It is argued here, however, that capitalism is the only social system that, while it may oppress people, does so in a way that makes them stronger & smarter. It makes people mobilize for their benefit, whether that be education, economic opportunity, or social acceptance. The question is posed: "When will Chinese intellectuals explore the mysteries & contradictions at the heart of their own social order?". J. Stanton

This article places existing discourses on Egyptian cinema, revolution, and global feminism in conversation with theories of film melodrama. The text examines the tradition of Egyptian melodrama as a site for analogizing women's liberation with national modernization in the wake of the 1952 Revolution—an analogy facilitated by the careful manipulation of melodramatic vernaculars of emotionality, and the endurance of affective cultural memory. In this context melodrama functions as a specific critical tool for understanding how popular film culture then and now organizes people politically and affectively, on- and offscreen. The article further investigates the "method of contradictions" that seems necessary to think critically about comparative melodrama at three levels of discourse: melodrama in general; the Egyptian melodramatic tradition specifically; and within melodramatic scholarship that tends to resemble its object of study.