January 2016

Aynne Kokas is the C.K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center, the Director of the UVA East Asia Center, and an Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Her newest book, Trafficking Data: How China Is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty (Oxford University Press, 2022), argues that exploitative Silicon Valley data governance practices help China build infrastructures for global control. Her award-winning first book, Hollywood Made in China (University of California Press, 2017), argues that Chinese investment and regulations have transformed the U.S. commercial media industry, most prominently in the case of media conglomerates’ leveraging of global commercial brands.

Kokas is a non-resident scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow in the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program. She has received fellowships from the Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Humanities, Mellon Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Japan’s Abe Fellowship, and other international organizations.

Her writing and commentary have appeared globally in more than 50 countries and 15 languages. In the United States, her research and writing appear regularly in media outlets including CNBC, NPR’s Marketplace, The Washington Post, and Wired. She has testified before the Senate Finance Committee, House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Paul Ratje is a photojournalist based in Asia who focuses on social issues, cultures, and travel photography. He lives in Taiwan, where he moved to learn Mandarin and where he documents the struggles of Southeast Asian migrant workers on the island. As a photographer, he aspires to create images which will provoke thought and promote change.