This panel session brings together four papers with diverse themes and methodologies in the historical study of information cultures in twentieth-century China. The papers highlight how generators of knowledge, institutions of information collection and diffusion, and the discourses to which they gave rise to, played an essential role in the social transformations of modern China. By foregrounding information in social and political changes, the papers challenge conventional narratives on social revolution and state-building, while bringing the historiography of modern China into dialogue with the emerging scholarships on politics of information and knowledge, social construction of science and technology, and trans-regional and transnational interactions.

Miao Feng traces the diffusion of scientific-artistic literature genre from the Soviet Union to China, and from Chinese cities to the countryside. Through examining the adaptations and recreation of kexue xiaopingwen in rural Communist base areas, she highlights the transnational and trans-regional origins of mass science education in Communist China, as well as the identity transformations of Chinese intellectuals from urban progressives to state educators. Yi Lu analyzes how the Chinese Communist Party adapted to new operational realities in the Chinese countryside by developing a distinctive culture of documentation, which uneasily combined elements of mass mobilization with Leninist bureaucratization. Drawing on Party archives, memoirs, and published documents, his research highlights how information control in guerrilla warfare contributes to the rise of enduring party and state structure in the Chinese Communist movement.

Di Luo reveals intricate social communications and knowledge-making dynamics across porous boundaries between unoccupied and occupied China, and between China and Southeast Asia and the Pacific during World War II. By tracing information flows between family members and friends across political borders, her research decenters the state-dominant narratives of confrontations and struggles, and highlights the shared wartime experiences of violence, survival, and identify formation. Zhongtian Han analyzes how the Chinese Communist Party built and employed hybrid radio institutions to create informational advantage in its violent encounters with the Nationalist state. His research reveals the diffusion of institutional and technical knowledge from the state to the revolution movement, and how the vexed environment of revolution gave rise to a personalized informational culture that would leave an enduring influence on power relationships within the Party.

The four papers of this panel reveal how information systems transcended geographical, social-economic, political, institutional, and temporal boundaries in twentieth-century China. Yet they also highlight China’s diverse cultures of information that reflected entrenched divisions within modern Chinese society. Taken together, this panel adds essential theoretical and methodological insights to the historical study of twentieth-century China and the politics of information and knowledge.