Using the power of social media, male students of Jinggangshan University got some concessions after they were forced to work as unpaid extra in a war movie.
All men enrolled at the four departments of the university were ordered to be extras as soldiers in a movie about the Long March. The film is about the military retreat by the Red Army of the Communist Party during the mid-1930s.
Students who would not show up at the shooting would be marked as absent, reported the South China Morning Post. However, the students were apparently exploited because they worked up to 12 hours on the set that the students decided to air their grievances online.
The flurry of internet complaints led the university, located in Jiangxi Province, to immediately change its policy. On Wednesday, the university said students who do not take part in the shooting would no longer be marked absent from lectures.
It also allowed the student to not participate or apply for sick leave if they develop skin allergies because the army uniform provided them were 10 years old. The film’s director banned the unpaid extras from washing the soldiers’ uniforms.
The students were supposed to work as extra for one week, but due to the online complaints, the school allowed them to work every other day only so they could rest the following day.
The movie is being shot in Jinggangshan, the cradle of communist revolution in China, a remote mountainous area in Jiangxi Province. In February, President Xi Jinping visited the place before the Lunar New Year.