Paige Lockwood (second from left) joins her family after winning a prize in the high school category for $1,000. [Photo by LIA ZHU / CHINA DAILY]

Another contestant, Paige Lockwood from Punahou School in Hawaii, touched upon China's population, food, science, tourism, politics and relations with the US in her animated short film "The Road to Success".

"For the US to keep up with China's incredible development, we have to be able to collaborate and understand each other. By pooling our knowledge and resources, we can succeed together," said Lockwood in her film.

"To me, China is like a city on a distant hill, I can't get specific features that would present themselves on the road through my life, but I know that they will. I can see clearly the future's path to success leads straight through China," she said in her film.

She won a prize for being "entertaining and supported by facts."

"China has the most incredible culture and it's a really important country," said Lockwood, who is half Chinese, after winning her prize. "There's a summer program I want to go on so when I saw this contest, everything just fit into place. It's a great opportunity for me to do something related to China and raise money to go to China."

Chinese actress Joan Chen, head juror, said she was not surprised the students could produce such impressive films in various styles.

"I know they themselves have realized how important China is," said Chen, a mother of two teenagers living in the San Francisco Bay area. "The goal of this contest is to encourage students to think more deeply about modern China and do research themselves."

She said China remains as mysterious to most Americans as ever. "Our future global citizens and leaders need to be China-savvy, but disappointingly, we have two major challenges," she said.

Chinese history taught in most US high schools ceases at Mao's death – essentially 1976.

"China's rapid rise to a global economic power constitutes one of the great historical events of our time, and it's not part of today's standard curriculum," she said.

"Secondly, our news sources do not present the most balanced viewpoints. Today's media often focus on the simplistic and sensational angles, so we often miss the more nuanced, complex perspective on important issues, which might strongly influence our perception of China," she said.

Through this contest, the jury of more than 30 judges has learned that the younger generations are definitely interested in learning about China, as most of the contestants are currently studying Mandarin, said Chen, who is also a board member of the 1990 Institute.

According to the organizer, in the period of six days of public vote, these videos were watched 17,000 times internationally and generated about 12,000 votes.

"Video is a powerful medium, and we hope to continue leveraging well to accelerate this movement for global fluency," said Chen. "We expect there will be more participants next year."

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com