Chinese Media Improvisations
China

Chinese Media Improvisations

by Xuenan Cao

Society & Class Non-Fiction 2026

Summary

How does a society innovate when resources are scarce? In Chinese Media Improvisations: Thriving on Deficits, scholar Xuenan Cao offers a fresh perspective on China’s technological development, examining how shortages, political pressures, and material constraints have shaped the country’s media and technological imagination. Moving across several periods of Chinese history, Cao explores the printing shortages of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, the challenges of modernising China’s railway infrastructure, early experiments in information theory when computers were unavailable, and contemporary attempts to incorporate artificial intelligence into urban life. These seemingly disparate episodes reveal a recurring pattern: people adapt existing tools, improvise unconventional solutions, and transform limitations into opportunities for experimentation. Drawing on archival documents, newspapers, scientific publications, and literary works, Cao combines historical research with media theory to challenge assumptions about technological progress that originate in Western scholarship. The result is an interdisciplinary study of creativity, scarcity, and innovation that illuminates how China’s distinctive historical and political circumstances have shaped its relationship with technology.

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Country
China
Asia
About the author
Xuenan Cao
Xuenan Cao

Xuenan Cao is a scholar of media, technology, and cultural studies whose research explores the relationship between technological development, social systems, and cultural imagination. She is Professor and Chair of General Education at San Francisco Bay University and serves as adjunct faculty in Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She previously taught at Duke University, New York University Shanghai, and Yale University. Cao earned her PhD in Communication and Media Studies from Duke University. Her interdisciplinary scholarship spans the humanities and computer science, with publications addressing media theory, digital culture, artificial intelligence, and the cultural consequences of technological change. Her work has appeared in journals including PMLA, Grey Room, Theory, Culture & Society, and Information, Communication & Society. Her book Chinese Media Improvisations: Thriving on Deficits (2026), published by Stanford University Press, examines how resource shortages and political pressures have shaped China’s media history and technological imagination, from print culture to contemporary AI applications. Drawing on her personal experiences growing up in China and extensive archival research, Cao challenges conventional assumptions about innovation and technological progress.

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Details
Published
2026
Author
Xuenan Cao