Ying Zhu

Ying Zhu is professor emeritus at the City University of New York and director of the Center for Film and Moving Image Research in the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. The recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, she is the author of four books including Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television and Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World’s Largest Movie Market (both from The New Press) and co-editor of six books including Soft Power with Chinese Characteristics: China’s Campaign for Hearts and Minds. She is the founder and chief editor of the peer-reviewed journal Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images. She resides in New York and Hong Kong.

Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television

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With over 1.2 billion viewers globally, including millions in the United States, China Central Television (CCTV) reaches the world’s single largest audience. The official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, CCTV is also a dynamic modern media conglomerate, fully reliant on advertising revenue and aggressively competitive both within China and on the global media scene. … Read more

China: From Cartier to Confucius

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As the glistening Cartier sign, the visually arresting skyscrapers, and the shining BMWs and Ferraris scream out China’s unprecedented prosperity, the question confronting a young generation of Chinese who came of age during the period of rapid economic growth is an anxious one: Is this all there is? Researched and co-produced by Ying Zhu, “China: … Read more

The Google China Standoff

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Information is key to the new global geopolitical and geoeconomic frontier. In a fight to regulate information flow, the Chinese government has blocked Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and censored information that it deems detrimental in the name of “Chinese national interest.” Last year Google refused to comply with Chinese censorship laws and moved its search engine … Read more

Sun Mingjing: Pioneering Chinese Filmmaking

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This presentation is on Prof. Ying Zhu’s documentary about the pioneering Chinese educational filmmaker Sun Mingjing. Sun’s documentaries marked a pinnacle of China’s non-fiction film production in the 1930-40s yet, up until the early 2000s, his name was scarcely mentioned in film history books in China and his films were mostly unknown to the generation … Read more

Costume Drama and the Transformation of Chinese Primetime TV

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A wave of costume drama serials began to dominate dramatic programming in Chinese primetime television in the mid 1990s. Such drama serials featured historical figures and events of glorious bygone dynasties. The trend climaxed in the late 1990s and the early 2000s with the saturation of palace drama set in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), what … Read more