[2] Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, Wang's 9 hour epic documentary of industrial China, was considered a major success.
He reflects on the social fate of images thoroughly analyzing Wang's 2010 Man with No Name, writing that the director, as a humble portrait artist of a single rural worker, manages to represent the whole of China's people (as well as people from all over the World) "not through his past, nor his ideas, nor his name, nor his place in society, but through the simple gestures with which he works at his solitary life",[3] as opposed to the common epic portraits of national identity based on military prowess, war heroes and manifest destinies.
In December 2023, alongside 50 other filmmakers, Wang Bing signed an open letter published in Libération demanding a ceasefire and an end to the killing of civilians amid the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, and for a humanitarian corridor into Gaza to be established for humanitarian aid, and the release of hostages.
[8][9] News websites such as Sohu had previously reported on Wang's Golden Lion nomination, but the articles were subsequently taken offline.
[12] Previously at the 2023 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, where Wang was invited as the Guest of Honor,[13] he stated that "I’m not particularly interested in politics (…) I don’t want my films to become a political tool", and that he wanted to step away from "the big machine that runs in China, the process of basically making everything propaganda in a way.