Here, three top Chinese directors offer their perspective on how they capture these changes on film.

Chen Kaige is one of the great directors of Chinese film. His films, such as Farewell My Concubine and The Emperor And The Assassin have been hugely popular, and won prizes around the world.

His new film, Together, tells the story of a man who takes his son to live in Beijing, in order to develop his talents as a violinist. As a youth, Chen Kaige grew up during the cultural revolution in the country - and denounced his own father as an enemy of the state.

Together is my personal story. The young boy is me.

When I was young, very young, during the cultural revolution, I was very depressed, because I wasn't accepted by its collective - because my father was a political problem.

I almost died. Not because anyone gave me physical pressure, but because I wanted to be regarded, I wanted to be accepted by them, I wanted to be part of the social machine, I wanted to be called a good child of Chairman Mao.

Chen Kaige is one of China's best-known directors

I think that during the cultural revolution, classical music from the West saved my life - which is very nice.

I see this story in Together as my own, because I believe I was that young boy. The father was my father.

I wanted to end the film in the train station, because I was very moved by what my father did to me.

When I decided to go to the countryside, we pretended we were not father and son. We were friends - we shook hands, and that was that.

He said: 'Take care of yourself, write a letter to us, let us know what happens there.' I said I will - but when the train started to move, and he ran after the train, he didn't know I was watching him. But I think that moment changed my life.

Then I knew that he loved me. I wrote a letter to him immediately.

I did terrible things to him. I spoke against him. It's terrible, really terrible. I think I want to tell the truth to the people to avoid this kind of thing happening again in the future.

Normally people are not allowed to do such things to their parents. If you are a human being you can't do that.

You cannot imagine what has happened there. Something around you forces you to do terrible things against your beloved.

No-one can fight back. You convince yourself that this is the right thing to do. That's the terrible thing.

Andrew Cheng in among the generation of younger Chinese filmmakers shooting fast films on digital or DV technology. They are storytellers of a booming, hi-tech China.

Cheng's film Welcome To Destination Shanghai is an improvised story which fictionalises the real-life experiences of its actors into an ensemble piece reflecting on life in the economic miracle city of Shanghai.

I don't have a script to start with in this film.

All those episodes that go into each other and form Welcome To Destination Shanghai are based on the experience of the actors in the movie.

Andrew Cheng highlights the way Shanghai has been transformed

Some of them are their personal experience; some of the scenes borrowed from the stories in the news, on the internet.

The actress who plays the brothel owner in the film, Jennifer, used to work in that industry 10 years ago, when she was young.

I know her experience, and I think, 'she can have those sorts of feelings'.

The characters also include Irene, who is having an operation on her vagina, and a gay man who is divorcing his wife. I chose these stories because this movie is about real life. It's not about a very sunny boy, or a very sunny girl, who is very successful in Shanghai.

We already have too many novels, too many movies, and too many documentaries being done about this side of Shanghai.

So I wanted to do something else. Some people like it, some people hate it.

I think I catch that moment, and I catch the feelings, that Shanghai was built in about 10 years.

All the high buildings - it's very modern, very futuristic. The whole city has been built in 10 years.

But what about the people who live down there? That's why I want to make the movie. It's about the impact on these people over the 10 years.

We are at a crossroads. The old generation of Chinese filmmakers is fading out - the old techniques, all their way of thinking, is stereotyped.

The Western audience needs something that is very new, and the Chinese audience needs something that is very new as well.

You have to make or produce a film, a work, which caters for both markets.

It's a big challenge.

We provide a record for the people who live in this changing society.

Doug Chan is one of a great number of Hong Kong directors. However, his prize-winning horror, Love Is Not A Sin, about the friendship of two young girls, is set in Macau, the former Portuguese colony now belonging to China. Macau is usually seen as being in the shadow of near neighbour Hong Kong.

In the film, one girl, Manman, sets up a video camera in her friend Moon's room after she thinks she has seen a ghost there. She discovers Moon is a boy - but that is just the first of a number of twists in the thriller, which culminates in incestuous fantasies, long-lost siblings, and the discovery of some dark secrets.

I was sent from Macau to Hong Kong to study in a boarding school.

I was very fond of Macau. But when I returned to Hong Kong more than a decade later, people thought that Macau was not as advanced. They regarded Macau as basically a backstreet village.

Doug Chan's film looks at confused identity in Macau

But I was very fond of Macau, and I wanted to admit that I was from Macau. I have a somewhat confused identity.

I am not very keen on politics or the economy, or this sort of issues. What I want to say is where you are from, or where you belong to, isn't confined to what your papers say.

It is where your heart is. So in my case, my heart is in Macau.

There weren't any specific reasons for the style of the film [which sees action stopping and arrows drawn on the frame, or reasons listed for a character's behaviour] - it was just fun.

When you do something that's not bound by rules, or you want to break the rules, there's a lot of experimenting. A lot of things can happen.

It wouldn't hurt anybody. Unlike mixing things in the laboratory, where you might cause an explosion and hurt other people, when you're making a film you can experiment, you can let your imagination run wild.

I wanted to show the film to my daughters when they grow up. At the time I'm going to show it, I want to say to them: 'This is something that daddy has made for you, this is something daddy wants to say to you - there's a message in it that daddy wants to express to you.'