Taiwan and Overseas Chinese Christian Broadcast during the Cold War

Date(s)： 2024/05/07

Time： 14:00~16:00

Venue： Archives 3rd Conference Hall

Host： Prof. Fu Jia-Chen ( Associate research fellow ,IMH, AS)

Speaker：Prof. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee （Professor of History & Director of the Global Asia Institute, Pace University）

Organizer： Western Learning and China Research Group

Abstract：
Many experts have recognized the religious dimension of the Cold War and discussed the mobilization of conservative, God-fearing American churches to combat Communism in foreign policy. Yet this historiographical trend overlooks the agency and contributions of non-Western church actors who did not always share the same ideological antagonism of their U.S. counterparts. Taiwan offers a more nuanced understanding of Chinese Christian radio media in effecting change at the transnational and subnational levels. This project examines the centrality of Taiwan in East Asia’s invisible battle of Cold War airwaves, and the profound influence of Taiwan’s Christian media on China’s transition from an authoritarian society to a less restrictive environment in the late 20th century. It seeks to address three questions. First, what was the geopolitical environment that enabled Taiwan’s Christian (i.e., Catholic and Protestant) radio organizations to begin broadcasting to China in the late 1950s? Second, how did the nature of Christian broadcasting change from the KMT’s dictatorial era to the period of media liberalization in the 1980s? Third, how did Taiwan’s religious radio enterprises contribute to the revival of churches in China?

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