Voice of America Chinese-dialect broadcasting and the Chinese cultural Cold War, 1949–1953 1

Abstract

This chapter explores the Chinese broadcasts produced by Voice of America (VOA) – the well-known Cold War American radio service – in the years immediately following the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. While it locates VOA within a broader array of American (or US-financed or -backed) institutions which sought to undermine the legitimacy of communism in China and promote a positive view of the United States to listeners in China, it also stresses the importance of overseas Chinese audiences to VOA’s work in this same period. VOA viewed overseas Chinese audiences in Southeast Asia (and elsewhere) as politically important given the economic pre-eminence of such communities in various countries throughout Asia. The chapter focuses specifically on VOA’s broadcasting in Chinese “dialects” that were spoken amongst diasporic communities (as well as communities in China), including Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese. As the chapter shows, broadcasts in such languages reflected views amongst VOA executives and managers about the specificities of different dialect-based audiences.