Book Review: Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television, by Ying Zhu

Abstract

Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television. Ying Zhu. New York: The New Press, 2014. 304 pp. $ 18.95 pbk. $ 10.49 Kindle.Two Billion Eyes begins with an earthquake-the that hit China's Sichuan Province at 2:28 p.m. on May 12, 2008. Including aftershocks, it killed at least 90,000 people and left 5 million homeless.Ying Zhu, a professor of media culture at the City University of New York, C ollege of Staten Island, was in Beijing at the time, almost 1,000 miles from the epicenter. She felt her apartment building sway. Phoning to check on her, a friend suggested she turn on China Central Television (CCTV), the state-operated broadcaster often derided by netizens as Hee-Hee-TV for its take-it-with-a-grain-of-salt propaganda.What Zhu saw was impressive: Within minutes of the earthquake, CCTV was carrying a rolling ticker with news of the disaster. By 3:00 p.m., reporters were on the air with updates. By 3:20 p.m., News Channel, CCTV's version of CNN, started broadcasting Exclusive Reports on Sichuan.The speed and initial frankness of Chinese media reports from Sichuan were unprecedented, surprising everyone both at home and around the world, Zhu writes in her book. It was a stark contrast to the government-controlled reporting of the runup to the Olympic Games that soon would be held in Beijing. The earthquake coverage was instantly recognized as a milestone in Chinese journalism and disaster reporting, and for a moment, the Chinese media appeared to break free of their assumed propaganda role.Indeed, western journalists relied on and applauded CCTV's work. So did the network's audience: More than 1 billion people-hence, 2 billion eyes-tuned in to CCTV's quake coverage between May 12 and May 21, Zhu notes.Her book bills itself as the first to scrutinize the network, which was founded in 1958 as Beijing TV. Zhu describes the post-Mao transformation of China's only national TV network into an influential multimedia conglomerate.CCTV accomplished this as it juggled competing demands: The government censors the news, but citizens yearn for truth; CCTV's journalists seek professional respect, but the network is officially a mouthpiece for the one-party state; and now, under the market economy reforms of the 1980s, the broadcasting operation must turn a profit by offering programming with popular appeal.As a state-controlled yet commercially operated entity, CCTV has become the very archetype of the Chinese model, Zhu asserts. She calls the network one place we can turn to as we attempt to make sense, at least from the perspective of media and society, of China's transformation and its global ramifications.Zhu provides historical context for CCTV's rise. Because of poverty and other factors, she states, television did not eclipsed radio as the most important mass medium in China until the early 1990s. …