American Radio in China: International Encounters with Technology and Communications, 1919-41 (Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media)

"Interwar era efforts to expand US radio into China floundered in the face of flawed US policies and approaches. Situated at the intersection of media studies, technology studies, and US foreign relations, this study frames the ill-fated radio initiatives as symptomatic of an increasingly troubled US-East Asian relationship before the Pacific War"-- Provided by publisher Between 1919 and 1941, an array of American businessmen, diplomats, missionaries, and private citizens hoped to bring American radio to China. Initiatives included efforts to establish Sino-American radio-telegraphy links across the Pacific, start shortwave broadcasts of American programming to China, support America broadcasting in China itself, increase sales of American radio equipment, and carve out a niche on China's airwaves for American missionary broadcasters. However, excessive faith in radio's influential powers to promote presumably mutually beneficial American economic and cultural expansion blinded many Americans to the complexities they faced. American radio ultimately magnified rather than mitigated the tensions that pit Americans against Chinese nationalists and Japanese imperialists in the years before the Pacific War. By drawing on scholarship in the history of technology, communications and media studies, and US foreign relations, this book's exploration into the relationship between technology, communications, and international relations is relevant to understanding today's globalizing world Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Introduction....Pages 1-16 “We Owe Nothing to Their Sensibilities”: Federal Telegraph, the Open Door, and the Washington System in 1920s China....Pages 17-41 “We Are Not Interested in the Politics of the Situation”: The Radio Corporation of America in Nationalist China, 1928–37....Pages 42-68 “By Some It Is Doubted If the Chinese Will Ever Become Radio Fans”: Sino-American Relations and Chinese Broadcasting during the Interwar Era....Pages 69-89 “As If We Lived on Maine St. in Kansas, USA”: Shortwave Broadcasting and American Mass Media in Wartime China....Pages 90-125 “Win China for Christ through Radio”: Religious Broadcasting and the American Missionary Movement in Nationalist China....Pages 126-153 “Unofficial Radio Hell-Raiser”: Radio News and US-Japanese Conflict on the Eve of the Pacific War....Pages 154-187 Conclusion....Pages 188-199 Back Matter....Pages 200-286