2019 - 2020 Back

  • Date : 2019-10-23

    Time : 19:00 - 21:00

    Speaker : Mr. Mike Chinoy

    Affiliation : Hong Kong America Center & Universities Service Center for China Studies

    Venue : Lecture Theatre 3, Lee Shau Kee Building, CUHK

Assignment China


The Hong Kong-America Center is organizing a film screening series “Assignment China”. The second session will screen the documentary “China Watching” produced and directed by Mike Chinoy.


Date: 23 October 2019 (Wed)
Time: 7 - 9 PM
Venue: Lecture Theatre 3, Lee Shau Kee Building, CUHK
Language: English
Post-screening Q&A with Mike Chinoy.



About the Film Series
From the barriers of language, culture and politics, to the logistical challenges of war, revolution, isolation, internal upheaval, government restrictions and changing technology, covering China has been one of the most difficult of journalistic assignments. It’s also one of the most important. For decades, what American and Western correspondents have reported about China has profoundly influenced international views of the country, and the policies of many Westerns governments.

To explore this issue, the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California produced a 12-part documentary film series for on the history of American correspondents in China from 1945 to the present day. Written and narrated by former CNN Beijing Bureau Chief and Senior Asia Correspondent Mike Chinoy, Assignment China is a vivid introduction to 70 years of political, economic and social change through the eye of the reporters who covered the country.

Mike Chinoy

Mike Chinoy was a foreign correspondent for more than 30 years. He served as CNN’s bureau chief in Beijing and Hong Kong, and as Senior Asia Correspondent. After leaving CNN, he was a Senior fellow the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles. He is currently a Non-Resident Senior fellow at the University of Southern California’s US-China Institute.
He has written four books - China Live: People Power and the Television Revolution (1999), Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis (2008), The Last POW (2014) and the forthcoming Are You With Me? Kevin Boyle and the Rise of the Human Rights Movement.


China Watching ( Oct 23 )
China Watching is the term used to describe how reporters, diplomats, and others sought to understand China during a time when they were unable to visit the country. After Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist came to power on October 1, 1949 most American journalists and others working for U.S. news organizations left China. The U.S. did not recognize the new government, U.S. diplomatic posts were closed and China generally did not welcome journalists from western countries. Over the next two decades, few journalists were able to report from inside China for U.S. news organizations. Those who did get in, by virtue of not being U.S. citizens or through special invitation, were closely monitored. Most American reporting, however, on China was done from the “listening post” of Hong Kong, which, well before it became Asia’s business center, was the world’s most important location for trying to understand developments in mainland China.