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This paper offers an outline of the narratives and perceptions by Italian travellers about the life and social position of Chinese youth in the People's Republic during the 1950s. Its goal is to explore how the image of Chinese youth under Socialism produced by transnational propaganda in the Socialist cosmopolis and circulating abroad intertwined with the factual observations and the personal assumptions of the Italian intellectuals on the revolutionary social transformation of China in that period. It argues that, although travellers were impressed by the apparent protagonism of the younger generation in the construction of Socialism in China in those years and read it as a symbol of new China, they also speculated on how the conditions of youth after the revolution had really implied a dramatic change in their social and cultural power and in their political emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 1955 the People's Republic of China looked to Western Europe to develop new economic and cultural relations, and to project its new image as an independent Socialist state. In this new context, between 1955 and 1957 several Italian delegations visited China to explore the possibility of cooperation between China and Italy in the field of literature and art. This article investigates the most important of these delegations, led by the jurist, Piero Calamandrei, in 1955, and some subsequent initiatives, such as the exhibition of Italian artists held in Beijing in 1956. Drawing mainly from Italian published and private sources, the article explores how Socialist China's revolutionary cultural identity was understood and received in Italy in this period. It does so with special reference to the impact of Soviet cultural influence on China, and the prospect of Sino-Italian cooperation in the field of arts and literature as a way to bridge the East–West political and ideological divide. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the views and policies about the use of radio broadcasting for popular modern education in Republican China in the 1920s and 1930s. The development of radio technology for broadcasting in China during the first half of the twentieth century has been often justified on the ground of its importance as a tool for mass education. After the establishment of the Nanjing government in 1927, and especially in the second half of the 1930s, efforts were made by the Nationalist Party to advance the use of broadcasting for modern education. This cultural agenda partially reflected an international trend, but it was mainly just one aspect of a more general understanding about which should be the proper role of the media in a modern society. Although in China the use of radio broadcasting as a tool of popular education was hindered by many factors, the assumption of a strong nexus among progress, mass education and media technology shaped both the public opinion's perception of the medium and the Chinese State radio policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the policies and plans of the Nationalist Party (Guomindang, GMD) regarding wireless radio broadcasting, arguing that they laid the foundations for the development of a national-level modem cultural institution aimed, for the first time in China, at mass propaganda and education. During the Nanjing decade, notwithstanding its limits beyond the most developed urban areas, the Nationalists' approach was the extensive use of radio broadcasting for the 'partyfication' (danghua) of Chinese state structure and the Chinese people' s social and cultural life. Nevertheless, their aspirations were greater than their ability to transform the plan into reality. Unable to impose an effective state monopoly on radio communication and broadcasting infrastructures, the Nationalists' aims to exert stronger control and to gain a hegemonic position in the Chinese 'ether' could be achieved only by resorting to technical, administrative and legal measures whose efficacy was rather limited, because it was subordinated to a capacity to have them implemented. The Nationalists' main accomplishments were the establishment of a powerful national radio broadcasting station under the control of the Party in Nanjing and of a central-level commission aimed at coordinating the work of the different state, Party and military bureaucracies involved in radio broadcasting propaganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the writings on contemporary China in the 1920s and 1930s of Italian scholars, journalists and travellers. The turning point in Italian interest in Chinese events was represented by Italy's participation in the Boxer Rebellion, narrated in Italy by Luigi Barzini. As of the late 1920s, attention was refocused on China, propelled by interest in Chinese nationalism and its state-building process and the new Fascist foreign policy approach to Asia. Books by fascist journalists and propagandists as well as essays written by several scholars and diplomats and published under the auspices of government scientific institutions all testify to the double effort to understand Chinese politics and culture on new terms and to imagine a more important role for Italy in China as a result of her alleged special historical relationship with the 'Orient'. However, this effort to promote a better knowledge of China was subordinated to contingent interests and choices and reflected the inconsistency of Fascist Italy's policy towards Asia. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the complex interplay of political and cultural factors behind the writings concerned with Italian and Chinese relations during those decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]