Confronting the State: Radio and the Chinese Communist Party’s Information Operations, 1930–36

This paper analyzes the Chinese Communist Party’s radio-based information operations in 1930–1936, a largely unnoticed subject in past scholarship. It shows that the Party successfully built hybrid radio institutions by combining Party radio cadres with captured Nationalist radio personnel and equipment. Building upon this foundation, the Party conducted both secret and open radio reconnaissance operations and kept its own radio communications secure, thus creating essential informational advantages against the Nationalist government. The revolutionary crisis of 1934–1936 (the Long March) inadvertently drove further institutional integration of the Party’s radio operations, while also contributing to the rise of a personalized informational culture within the Party.

My paper forces a reconsideration of the Chinese revolution. By highlighting the Party’s institutionalization of its information operations, I challenge the peasant revolution framework of past scholarship and highlight how informational advantages were essential for the survival of the Communist revolution. Through analyzing the Party’s hybrid institutional building and putting Party and Nationalist archives into dialogue, I shift scholarly narratives on the Party’s science and technology policies from self-reliance and native techniques to the diffusion of knowledge and expertise from the state to the revolutionary movement. Finally, my paper reinterprets the changing power relationships within the Party in the context of the Party’s personalized informational culture, which contributed to the rise of a group of charismatic leaders centered around Mao.