Info from KCTS on a series coming later this month. It will air on two consecutive Wednesdays, 1/10 and 1/17 from 9:00-11:00 PM each night (two episodes per night).

CHINA FROM THE INSIDE is a series of documentaries, shot in high-definition, that explore China through Chinese eyes to see how their history has shaped them — and where their present is taking them. Few programs have gone beyond China's economic miracle to deal with the issues that this series takes on: governance, women, nature and freedom. Filmmaker Jonathan Lewis was granted access to regions deep inside China where few, if any, Western journalists have been permitted.

Episode descriptions:

101 "Power and the People"--How do you run China? Do it successfully, and you have a hugely prosperous, innovative and powerful empire to rival any the world has seen. Mess it up, and the chaos is vast and terrible. Today, the Communist Party faces a range of challenges. How is it dealing with corruption and rural unrest as well as the ideological by-products of burgeoning capitalism?

102 "Women of the Country"--"Women hold up half the sky," Mao said. Yet for centuries their feet were bound and their horizons were narrow. Deprived of opportunities, China's women suffered terribly. Today, Chinese women are starting to witness changes. The young in the cities have opportunities unimaginable to their grandmothers, who survived the Great Leap Forward, and their mothers, who denounced parents and teachers in the Cultural Revolution. Yet for millions of women in rural China, change remains painfully slow.

103 "Shifting Nature"--Episode three of CHINA FROM THE INSIDE deals with nature and the environment. The challenges of health, pollution and nutrition are mind-boggling. The Chinese are nearly a quarter of the world's population, yet they only have 7 percent of the world's arable land. Two hundred years before Christ, the Qin emperor built a one thousand-mile-long canal. Now the Chinese have proposed re-routing the Yellow River. At what price can China control nature?

104 "Freedom and Justice"--Can China have freedom without chaos? Capitalism without democracy? Education without independence of mind? What price do people pay for acting and thinking as individuals? China has a history of sometimes brutal repression. Religious belief affords a refuge from official dogma, but some faiths are seen as dangerous. The series closes with an exploration of this interlocking conflict between personal freedom and governance.