Barbarians Remix: Seeking News, Making China

In this encore episode of Barbarians at the Gate, first broadcast in March 2024, John Alekna talks about his fascinating new book Seeking News, Making China: Information Technology and the Emergence of Mass Society. In 20th-century China, the gradual importation and development of information technology had an enormous impact on the way news was disseminated and accessed by the general public. When radio first appeared in the early 1920s, fewer than 8 in 1,000 people had access to newspapers, whereas by the Mao period hundreds of millions of citizens were receiving daily news and information via radio, TV, and shortwave technology. This book provides an enlightening “meta-historical” account of the evolving communications technologies that fueled the May Fourth Movement, KMT and CCP propaganda campaigns during WWII, and the mass information campaigns of the Mao era, such as the Cultural Revolution. The book describes how the various interlocking information technologies, infrastructure, and communication channels—what Alekna calls the “newsscape”—affected popular opinion, politics, and state power. John Alekna is an Assistant Professor in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at Peking University.

You can listen to Barbarians Remix: Seeking News, Making China online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Barbarians Remix: Seeking News, Making China is an episode from Barbarians at the Gate by Barbarians at the Gate.

This episode is 0:37:33 long.

This episode was published on Sep 16, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Barbarians at the Gate when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.