In 1976, he planned to attend UC-San Diego to pursue studies in journalism and media but did not earn enough money for tuition.

However, after Murdoch's deal fell through, Yu eventually took over the helm of this influential newspaper as chairman at the age of 33.

In 1993, Yu launched the Xian Dai Daily newspaper in China, and then acquired Yazhou Zhoukan, a weekly news magazine, from Time Warner.

On February 19, 1997, Yu personally led the network's worldwide exclusive report on the death of China's leader Deng Xiaoping.

The award winning biopic based on the ancient Chinese philosopher, Confucius, opened in 2010 with a record breaking 2,500 copies, virtually every theatre in China.

[13] In 2006, Yu began to invest in digital cinema theaters from the first to third tier cities throughout China.

He has participated in many international roundtable conferences and Track II dialogues, including National Committee on American Foreign Policy Conference on the prospects for Taiwan Strait Relations[16]，Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies China Forum;[17] and the recent annual China-U.S. Senior Officials Training session at the Tsinghua University, where he led a discussion on the role of media and ideology in US-China relations, with US officials from the Department of State, Defense, Homeland Security and the Navy.