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Available for over a year

An omnibus edition of Professor Rana Mitter's audio portraits of figures who have shaped the arc of Chinese history. He begins with a Sima Qian, a historian whose objectivity got him into big trouble at court. When he confronted the emperor, he was subjected to a horrific and humiliating punishment. His second subject is a great Chinese leader who wasn't actually Chinese - Kublai Khan, the Mongol head of a dynasty that both occupied China and connected it to a wider world. If there were a competition for most famous Chinese in history, Confucius would surely come out on top. He was the philosopher and ethicist who has given China a significant part of its cultural DNA. Li Qingzhao is the woman remembered today as one of the great poets. A passionate writer who destroyed her reputation by divorcing her husband, she nevertheless established a reputation as a true patriot that has lasted to the present day in China. Professor Mitter ends this programme not with a character - but with a pioneering TV documentary series, one of the most watched in history. When it was shown in 1988 it started a national debate about modernisation and democracy, but was then was banned after Tiananmen Square in 1989. Presenter: Rana Mitter Producer: Ben Crighton Researcher: Elizabeth Smith Rosser.