Multinationals and the Transnational Origins of Wireless Communication in Modern China, 1895–1937

This article explores the introduction of wireless telegraphy in early 20th century China prior to the outbreak of war in 1937. Soon after Guglielmo Marconi’s successful wireless experiments in 1895, wireless technology started to enter China. From the beginning, multinational firms like Telefunken were key in introducing this new technology in China. They provided expertise and machinery and negotiated concessions with different Chinese governments. So far, the scholarly literature, even if it ostensibly at times also focused on certain multinational companies, has mainly covered the development of Chinese wireless telegraphy in the early 20th century from a political perspective, emphasizing rivalries between opposing powers and the Chinese government’s concern with the maintaining and recouping of Chinese sovereignty over wireless infrastructure. In contrast, this article hopes to shift our view more towards the actual multinational companies that operated in the Chinese market, introduced this new technology to China and helped establish China’s wireless infrastructure.

This article first focuses on the period before 1927 when multinational companies vied for wireless concessions first from the Qing government and then, after its fall in 1912, from different regional regimes while China was politically fragmented. During this period, a rudimentary wireless network emerged in China. The second part of the article then explores the activities of multinationals involved in selling wireless equipment during the Nanjing Decade (1927-1937). The article discusses how during this period multinational companies not only helped transfer the necessary technology for the continued development of China’s domestic wireless network but also supplied machinery for the Chinese Government Radio Administration, a major international wireless station erected in Shanghai by the Chinese central government. All in all, this article argues that multinationals played a key role as technological facilitators and intermediaries in the development of wireless telegraphy in early 20th century China.