Journalist Mike Chinoy presented a screening of his film, Assignment: China – Tiananmen Square.
Thirty years have passed since students and others waved banners calling for greater freedom and official accountability in Tiananmen Square. People around the globe were deeply moved by the idealism and optimism of the demonstrators, yet dismayed by the violence that ended the demonstrations. Those seven weeks in 1989 have had a profound influence on what Americans and many others think about China. Assignment: China – Tiananmen Square tells how those stories were brought to American audiences by US news organisations in 1989.
Mike Chinoy is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California and the creator of “Assignment China,” a 12-part documentary film series on the history of American journalists in China.
Previously, he was a CNN foreign correspondent for 24 years, serving as the network’s first Beijing Bureau Chief from 1987 to 1995 and as Senior Asia Correspondent. He covered the 1989 events at Tiananmen Square, earning Emmy, duPont and Peabody awards.
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.” He taught at the USC Annenberg School of Communication and ran the School's Hong Kong summer program 2007-2009. From 2006-2009 he was Edgerton Senior Fellow at the Pacific Council for International Policy.
