Assignment: China -- USCI series on American reporting on China

US-China Today, a non-profit student-driven magazine of the USC US-China Institute focusing on the multidimensional and evolving US-China relationship and on significant trends in contemporary China, features a special documentary project on American reporting in China called Assignment China.

Interviews with [the] journalists who covered China are the core of Assignment: China which is illustrated by archival news footage and other images... In addition to interviews with those whose work was featured on American front pages and broadcasts, the series includes interviews with Chinese and American officials who sought to manage coverage of China or of specific events, such as Nixon’s historic 1972 trip.

Mike Chinoy, the distinguished former CNN Asia correspondent and USC U.S.-China Institute Senior Fellow, is the writer and reporter for the series. He is assisted by  USCI staff and students.

Assignment: China has recently published two short documentaries – “The Week That Changed The World” and "Opening Up."

The Week that Changed the World – President Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip ended more than two decades of Cold War hostility. American and Chinese forces had fought each other in Korea and the United States had refused to formally recognize Beijing’s government and did recognize Taipei’s. From the founding of the People’s Republic until the Nixon trip, American news organizations had virtually no access to the world’s largest and most rapidly changing country. America’s most famous journalists clamored to go with the president, though most had no idea what they might find, telling us “it was like going to the moon.”
USCI website | Chinese subtitled version 中文字幕版
USCI YouTube Channel | Chinese subtitled YouTube version 中文字幕版


Opening Up – With the restoration of U.S.-China diplomatic relations in 1979, American news organizations were finally able to base reporters in China, something that even the Nixon trip hadn’t made possible. By this time, of course, China was embarking on stunning economic and social reforms. Private enterprise was being permitted, foreign investment pursued, and controlling births was made a government priority. There were also stirrings of dissent, which the party-state moved to stifle. Though influential, the reporting corps was small. Delighted to be covering such sweeping changes, reporters sometimes chafed at the restrictions imposed on them by the Chinese government and their own editors and by the technological challenges of reporting from a developing country.
USCI website | Chinese subtitled version 中文字幕版
USCI YouTube Channel | Chinese subtitled YouTube version 中文字幕版