ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on drive radio, and examines its emergence, commercial development and reorientation since the early 1990s in China. As privately owned cars have increasingly become the main road users in contemporary urban China, drive radio has likewise grown into a site that promotes consumer information about cars and driving and related leisure activities, thereby participating in remaking citizenship and social identity. By analysing a number of programmes on Beijing drive radio, this chapter investigates how drive radio in urban China constructs a form of on-air ‘auto-space’ that promotes private car purchase and use, cultivates cosmopolitan leisure consumption, and negotiates consumer–citizenship inclusion and exclusion. It sheds light on how radio in contemporary China plays a role in class reformation and identity reconstitution, with the private car construed as a significant visible signifier of economic and social status.
