This welcome book comes in response to an uptick in research on television and modernization. The volume's first strength is its compact assessment of the subject in China. The attention to programming, not just policy, and the wider conversation about television in other media are also notable. . . .[I]n looking at how 'the tube' stood as a symbol and instrument of social change and modernity in China, Wen makes a useful contribution to studies in television history and Chinese media. She discusses what people watched and how the images on this new device in the home (and the set itself) entered and altered their lives. The new medium sat in a constellation of older media and practices of communication and culture. The disruptions caused by television therefore carried the markings of China, but readers will recognize commonalities with experience in other countries as well. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.

Choice Reviews

During the 1980s, China embraced TV technology more quickly and enthusiastically than any other society. It’s a story often told, but little understood, until now. Huike Wen shows how television played a pivotal role in the social and cultural transformations that took place during Deng Xiaoping’s decade of the four modernizations. Inspired by Lynn Spigel, Wen recovers the texture of the times to vividly explain how China 'made room for TV.'

Michael Curtin, Mellichamp Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara; author of Playing to the World's Biggest Audience

An interesting, enlightening, and thoughtful book on changes in China’s TV programming as a mirror of the modern transformation and unprecedented evolution of the milliard people’s society!

Junhao Hong