ABSTRACT
This chapter critically reviews the history of radio in pre-Mao and Mao-era China. It traces the first half of the twentieth century as far back as available archives allow, investigating how the then relatively modern technology of radio was introduced and applied in China. It shows how different players became involved in both producing and listening to radio, at a time when the Second World War and Chinese Civil War were being fought to decide the country’s fate. Moving away from propaganda as the main paradigm for analysis, the chapter offers a nuanced account of the multiple roles radio played in nation-building, subject production and modernization in the years before the economic reforms of the 1970s.
