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Technology and Culture 45.4 (2004) 712-739



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Forbidden Frequencies

Sino-American Relations and Chinese Broadcasting during the Interwar Era

W. A. Estes was confused. He had come home to the United States from Shanghai, where he was living, for an extended visit in June 1924. He hoped to bring a radio with him on his return, but he did not wish to run afoul of China's 1915 radio law. This relic of the pre-broadcasting era identified all radio equipment as military contraband and prohibited its importation and possession. Estes contacted the U.S. Department of State for guidance as he prepared for his return trip in early 1925. "Before I left China last June I know that many such sets, made in the United States and Europe, were in constant use in Shanghai," he wrote. Sets were easily acquired, and "reliable firms" sold them.1 Estes did not base his query solely on the assumption [End Page 712] that reliable firms abided by the law; he also mentioned the exhortations of a local minister who urged his parishioners, and their friends living up to 400 miles from Shanghai, to purchase radios. Certainly a minister would not encourage his flock to break the law! But despite indications that the restrictive law would be eased, Estes continued to receive letters from friends in China lamenting the confiscation of their sets. "I shall be very grateful for information in regard to this matter," Estes concluded. "I am returning to Shanghai in August and hope to be able to take a radio receiving set with me."2

The process that unfolded after Washington responded to Estes's query provides an excellent opportunity to explore the intersection between radio and Sino-American relations in the period before the Second World War. A target of European imperialism since the early nineteenth century, China's contribution to the German defeat in World War I had not been rewarded by the return of any territories, and Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism exploded in consequence. The Americans' poor response to China's grievances during the interwar years helped poison Sino-American relations and contributed to the complete break that occurred after the 1949 Chinese Communist Revolution.3

American problems with Chinese nationalism had roots in the Open Door policy, dating back to the nineteenth century. Depicted at home and to the Chinese as a benevolent policy designed to uplift China and save it from predatory European imperialists, in practice it frequently seemed a mere [End Page 713] cover for self-interested efforts to gain equal access to China's markets. The gap between rhetoric and reality fueled an underlying hostility that became deeply embedded in Sino-American relations by the twentieth century.4

Estes's desire to bring his radio to China partly spoke to Open Door concerns for market access. At the same time, Westerners—especially Americans—tended to view the spread of Western technology, such as radio, as intrinsically desirable and destined to occur along roughly the same lines as in the West, generally under Western direction. Such assumptions fostered a disregard for the values, interests, and ideas of non-Western peoples—a worldview guaranteed to provoke hostility among the growing numbers of nationalistic Chinese weary of Western contempt.5

The diplomatic travails that followed Estes's letter speak to this combination of historical issues. Uneven enforcement of China's radio laws reflected the reality of unequal access to China's market. As shortsighted American policy makers considered this dilemma over the next two decades, they typically dismissed Chinese concerns and laws. Informed by culturally biased assumptions about Western technology's potential in a non-Western society, key State Department officials doubted radio broadcasting could take root in China. Their conclusions, preserved in State Department files, assumed that the societal forces that shaped American broadcasting were irrelevant in China and precluded its development. They did not consider the possibility of alternative models of development. The issues explored in this article—Washington's response to Estes, American consular...

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