Part of his series exploring institutions in China, Zhou Hao’s remarkable 2009 documentary “The Transition Period” offers an amazingly frank look at the workings of the Chinese government as it follows a civil servant during his last three months as party secretary of an underdeveloped county. Guo Yongchang is the politician in question, the party secretary of the Committee of the Communist Party of Gushi County in Xinyang Municipality of Henan Province, which has a population of around 1.6 million spread across 32 smaller towns. As with other counties, Gushi is administered by both a county government and a county party committee. In the film, Zhou reveals the many complexities of Guo’s job and the way in which personal relations often take precedence over regulations in Chinese politics, depicting the constant manipulation needed to keep farmers, workers and other factions onside, and the level to which rules are treated as flexible...