Chinese omens. (Insider Report).

Hero, a new film by celebrated Chinese director Zhang Yimou, "has delighted Beijing's mandarins, who are submitting it as China's nominee for best foreign film at the Academy Awards," reported the January 2nd New York Times. "And it has infuriated some Chinese critics, who have panned Mr. Zhang's plot for promoting a philosophy of servitude."

The subject of Zhang's film is the court of Emperor Qin Shihuang, a ruthless monarch whose reign "has been compared to the actions of Napoleon and Stalin, and whose bloody legacy remains a raw wound in today's China." Best known as the builder of China's Great Wall 2,200 years ago, Qin absorbed six warring states into one centralized kingdom by pitilessly exercising total power. His methods included creating a totalitarian police state and summarily executing anyone suspected of disloyalty. "Modem artists approach the subject with caution, in part because Mao Zedong saw the founding emperor as an inspiration and the Communist Party still views the ancient leader as a pointed allegory," noted the Times.

While China's government-controlled film industry is preaching the ...