The social image of the “career woman” in occupied Shanghai can be explored in the context of the strong discursive vein of the “new woman” in modern China. In the 1930s, “new woman” discourses were extended to the visual field, as represented by the film Xin nüxing. However, while the image of xin nüxing in the printed media was largely controlled by the power of intellectual discourse, to the extent that Yingjin Zhang epitomises it as “panoptic surveillance” in Foucaultian terminology, the cinematic representation of xin nüxing became more complex and dubious, being influenced by more intricate and diverse factors in the mass system of cultural production. The image of “career women” in Shanghai printed media, often buttressed by visual images, should be seen from within this complex mass production system. Being separated from the solid image of the national warrior, which was hoisted high by the left-wing intellectuals, the social image of “career women” in popular culture was produced and consumed in a modern mass system.