Revisiting Dallas Smythe's "cultural screening": Maoist class politics and the technology revolution in socialist China.

Dallas Smythe's concept of "cultural screening" is often overlooked, despite its crucial importance for the politics of technology. Smythe posited that developing socialist countries should scrutinize technology imported from capitalist countries due to its potentially adverse ideological impacts. In this paper, I examine and develop this concept by analyzing the intricate dynamics of class politics characterizing socialist China's technological development. This paper also contributes to Chinese science and technology studies (STS) by providing new insights and perspectives. Unlike Smythe, who did not explicitly focus on class, Maoism emphasizes the role of class politics in shaping technological development. According to Mao, the participation of the masses in technological development is a key manifestation of socialism, whereas technocratic and intellectual approaches reflect capitalism. Therefore, he understood the development of technology as a "line struggle" between socialist and capitalist roads and prompted the mass mobilization of workers to study Maoist philosophy to ensure the implementation of "proletarian politics in command." The philosophy study movement aimed to reshape epistemological relationships between knowledge and practice, workers and technocrats, and labor and technology/machinery to mediate class politics in technological development in socialist China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]