Viola Zhou
Viola Zhou
Viola Zhou is an award-winning journalist based in New York. She previously lived in Hong Kong, covering China for the South China Morning Post and VICE. She now writes for tech publication Rest of World.
Viola’s stories are most often about the relationships between politics, technology, and people. She has written about the engineers and assembly line workers powering the global manufacturing machine. She also covers how artificial intelligence is reshaping the way humans work, feel, and interact.
She has won two SABEW and one SOPA journalism awards. Her work has been republished by The Guardian and adapted into an NPR Planet Money episode.
Viola speaks English, Mandarin, and Cantonese.
Get in touch: Email / LinkedIn
Selected works
On AI
My mom and Dr. DeepSeek - Rest of World, 2025
China’s AI boom depends on an army of exploited student interns - Rest of World, 2023
These women fell in love with an AI-voiced chatbot. Then it died - Rest of World, 2023
On manufacturing
How a Chinese battery factory sparked a political meltdown in a small Michigan town - Rest of World, 2025
TSMC’s debacle in the American desert - Rest of World, 2024
Inside Foxconn’s struggle to make iPhones in India - Rest of World, 2023
On tech & culture
Same-sex couples from China are getting married in Utah over Zoom - Rest of World, 2023
The return of the Lipstick King - Rest of World, 2022
Werewolf erotica is the latest global gig work trend - Rest of World, 2022
‘Online testing is a joke’: How Chinese students cheat on U.S. college entry exams - Rest of World, 2022
Xiaohongshu is teaching young Chinese women how to buy the perfect life - Rest of World, 2023
Boys’ love, censored - VICE News Reports, 2021
Chinese women are dumping their boyfriends over a feminist comedian - VICE, 2021
A thin fad is becoming life-threatening for Chinese women - VICE, 2021
Following years of domestic violence, a horrific murder - South China Morning Post, 2020
On Hong Kong
They were reporters in Hong Kong. Now they drive cabs and sell fried chicken - VICE, 2021
Inside Apple Daily, a Pro-Democracy Hong Kong Newspaper Under Assault - VICE, 2021
‘Hong Kong should not be like this’: inside a divided city - Inkstone, 2019
Press appearances
When Chinese manufacturing met Small Town, USA - Planet Money, NPR, 2025
Q&A: Viola Zhou on the Challenge of Covering Chinese Tech - Columbia Journalism Review, 2025