Listening to the Enemy: Radio Consumption and Technological Culture in Maoist China, 1949–1965

Abstract

Abstract:Drawing from a substantial body of government archives and internal reports from mainland China, the United States, and Taiwan, this article examines how daily transnational and technological communication practices among the masses impacted the making of political culture in Maoist China. The article begins with an overview of the pervasiveness of listening to enemy radio—the overseas radio stations unsanctioned by the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC)—followed by an in-depth analysis of the historical legacies, ideological and cultural rationales, and structural deficiencies that contributed to that popularity. It then explores how local radio users' responses and active reaching out to enemy radio stations in the 1950s and 1960s prompted the competing geopolitical powers facing off across the Taiwan Strait to adjust their government policies. Ultimately, this article argues that listening to enemy radio as a technological counterculture was instrumental to the making of socialist subjectivity, arising from the populace's appropriation of the strategic interplay between the PRC government and its Cold War rivals.