Globalizing American News: Information, Identity, and International Conflict in China, 1937–41

Radio expanded access to U.S. news and reporting for the many American diplomats, missionaries, and businessmen who resided throughout China in the volatile late 1930s and early 1940s. Japan and China went to war in 1937, a European war pitting Germany against England and France erupted in 1939, and the United States' position vis-à-vis these conflicts gravitated toward opposing Japan and Germany. In this context, the demand for U.S.-based reporting among these American expatriates living amidst the uncertainty of the China war zone grew exponentially. American-owned stations that broadcast in China and U.S.-based shortwave broadcasts addressed that demand. This presentation explores listener engagement with these news broadcasts. It considers how American radio news engaged both American and non-American listeners' notions of national identity. American, Japanese, and Chinese listeners soon viewed American news as an extension of American foreign policy, although there was no agreement whether this was a good thing. The perception of that connection propelled competing efforts to promote or stifle American news. Ultimately, American radio news reaching China became another vehicle for the international conflict and dissension that subsumed East Asia by the late 1930s. This account underscores the interconnections between technology and the wider historical context that must inform any historical assessment of a technology's broader significance. In so doing, this presentation also offers a corrective to popular interwar era notions held by many Americans, who uncritically claimed the exchange of news and information across international borders (especially American news and information) furthered the cause of international peace and friendship. Such a corrective is warranted not only because of its prevalence among Americans of the interwar era, but also because this type of international communications discourse continues to inform a variety of popular and even some scholarly discussion of expanding international communications during our own era.