{"product_id":"chinese-media-improvisations-thriving-on-deficits-hardback-9781503646148","title":"Chinese Media Improvisations; Thriving on Deficits (Hardback) 9781503646148","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eChinese Media Improvisations\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cfont size=\"5\"\u003eThriving on Deficits\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eXuenan Cao (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9781503646148\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eHardback, published 11 August 2026\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e286 pages, 28 illustrations - 3 tables, 3 figures, 24 halftones, 1 map\u003cbr\u003e22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.576 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\"One of the most exciting works I have read in media and cultural studies. Original in both form and theoretical intervention, this interdisciplinary book presents a novel pathway for decolonizing knowledge production in Anglophone academia.\"—Fan Yang, University of Maryland, Baltimore County \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eChinese Media Improvisations\u003c\/i\u003e tells a little-known and overlooked media history focused on glitchy radio signals, paper shortages, and AI gadgetry. In our age of media saturation and overabundance, it reveals, in a personal and compelling style, what has been unseen and lost.\"—Anna Greenspan, NYU Shanghai\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eXuenan Cao offers an unexpected angle on China's technological rise, spotlighting the role of deficit-driven improvisation. As Cao demonstrates, where printing paper, computers, and microchips have been in shortage, media improvisations and AI gadgetry have filled the gap and become the unlikeliest accelerants of tech imaginaries. \t\u003cbr\u003e \t\u003cbr\u003e \tEqual parts media-historical and literary analysis, the book connects several moments in Chinese history: Mao's Great Leap Forward that demanded the country produce mountains of books, notwithstanding the shortage of papers and printers; the compressed development that pushed key industries – such as China Railway \u003cspan style=\"letter-spacing: 0.06em;\"\u003e– \u003c\/span\u003eto informatize amidst hazards; the information-theoretical explosion in which scientists impersonated computing devices when there was none for them to access; and the ironic present, when municipals have scrambled to update their smart-cities with low-budget AI gadget theatrics, such as facial recognition toilet paper dispensers. These are scenarios in which media practitioners – from print to information technologies and to AI – have had to improvise in response to political pressure and thrive on a deficiency of funding and materials. Drawing on Chinese communist party archival records, China Railway local archives, newspapers, ersatz college reference books, science journals, and AI-related technical documents, each book section combines archival research and literary readings, narrated through personal history with media-theoretical extrapolation. Ultimately, Cao persuades that the critique and deconstruction of the canonicity of Western media theory requires an understanding of media improvisations in China.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003e Introduction\u003cbr\u003e PART I: Promiscuous Printing\u003cbr\u003e 1. Printing More by Consuming Less\u003cbr\u003e 2. Telling the Atmosphere: Yan Lianke's Fictional Historiographies\u003cbr\u003e PART II: Information Extrapolations\u003cbr\u003e 3. Improvising for Hazardous Networks\u003cbr\u003e 4. How to Think Like a Machine\u003cbr\u003e 5. Alien Cyberneticists in Liu Cixin's Three-Body Trilogy\u003cbr\u003e PART III: AI Gadgetry\u003cbr\u003e 6. Postsocialist Gadgetry\u003cbr\u003e 7. Smart City AI Theatrics Coda: Socialist Media? Doing Committed Work Through Autotheory\u003cbr\u003e Glossary of Chinese Terms\u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography\u003cbr\u003e Index\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"Stanford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52610728984856,"sku":"9781503646148","price":77.38,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/chinese-media-improvisations-thriving-on-deficits-hardback-9781503646148","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}