Xiao Liu

This project examines scientific practices and popular imaginations surrounding information technologies, cybernetics and systems theory in post-Mao China (1978-1989), and asks how China’s information fantasies were intertwined with its postsocialist transformations in all arenas. While there is increasing scholarship on Chinese internet culture and politics, my research unearths a heretofore neglected history of China’s participation in the global production and circulation of information technologies and discourses even before the general implementation of digital media and the internet. This project therefore provides a much-needed historical perspective to understanding the sociopolitical environments and cultural ferments for the adoption of new information technologies in post-Mao China.