Under the Dome (film)

Under the Dome (Chinese: 穹顶之下; pinyin: Qióngdǐng zhī xià) is a 2015 self-financed Chinese documentary by Chai Jing, a former China Central Television journalist, and Ming Fan, the documentary director, her long-term working partner at CCTV, concerning air pollution in China. It was viewed over 150 million times on Tencent within three days of its release and had been viewed a further 150 million times by the time it was taken offline four days later.

Chai Jing started making the documentary when her as yet unborn daughter developed a tumor in the womb, which had to be removed very soon after her birth. Chai blames China's air pollution for the tumor. The film, which blends a lecture format with personal narratives, expert interviews, and on-site factory footage, has frequently been likened to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Scholars note similarities in their didactic approach, the integration of scientific data with compelling visuals, and their shared objective of galvanizing public discourse and political action on environmental crises. The film openly criticizes state-owned energy companies, steel producers and coal factories, as well as showing the inability of the Ministry of Environmental Protection to act against the big polluters.

Despite demonstrating the failure of China's regulations on pollution, the Chinese government at first did not censor the film. Instead, the People's Daily reposted the film alongside an interview with Chai, while Chen Jining, the recently appointed minister for environmental protection, praised the film, expressing in a text message his gratitude. However, within a week, the Communist Party’s publicity department confidentially ordered the film to be removed. An employee of China Business News was suspended for leaking the order.