After a career spent currying favor with China's top leadership, is there still a U.S. audience for Robert L. Kuhn's message?
Illustration by Señor Salme
This past May, as Southern Californians entered their third month in quarantine from Covid-19, the local affiliate of PBS premiered a new documentary about poverty in China. Promising “unprecedented access,” the hour-long film followed Robert Lawrence Kuhn, a brain scientist and investment banker-turned-documentarian, as he traveled around China’s impoverished countryside. In his trademark mock turtlenecks, Kuhn interviewed villagers and officials about Beijing’s anti-poverty program —
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