The Little Emperors’ New Toys

Drawing on original research I conducted in the late 1980s, the book argues for a critical approach to the study of children and television. It begins with critical reappraisals of previous empiricist and interpretative studies to set the ground for a different theoretical inquiry which links biography with history. The situated activity of children’s television viewing therefore has to be related to the broader historical and cultural formations in post-Mao China.  By way of a methodological  pluralism of questionnaire survey,  in-depth interviews and observation, the book provides the reader with a thorough critical analysis of the rise of the new commercial ethic in Chinese society in general, and in the sector of media and communications in particular, at the very historical turning point of the late 1980s. Soon after that, Deng Xiaoping made his significant tour to south China, reckoning  a big step forward towards further liberalization and started to form a brave new world in China ever since.

• Children
• China
• Commercialization
• Critical Inquiry
• Television

• , Department of Sociology, Peking University, Beijing, China, People's Republic

  Bin Zhao

Bin Zhao is an associate professor of media sociology in the department of sociology in Peking University. She has been working in the area of media studies for the past twenty five years and has taught in several universities in the UK and China. She also worked for the English Channel of China Central Television as a TV presenter, gaining valuable insider’s knowledge of the working of television as such. 

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