 Not One Less portrays the mass media as a locus of power : Wei discovers that only someone with money or connections can gain access to a television station , but once someone is on camera she or he becomes part of an " invisible media hegemony " with the power to " manipulate social behavior " , catching people 's attention where paper advertisements could not and moving cityfolk to donate money to a country school . The power of television within the film 's story , according to Laikwan Pang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong , reflects its prominent place in Chinese society of the late 1990s , when domestic cinema was floundering but television was developing quickly ; Pang argues that television @-@ watching forms a " collective consciousness " for Chinese citizens , and that the way television unifies people in Not One Less is an illustration of this . 
