Radio Free Asia (Committee for a Free Asia)

This article is about the defunct propaganda outlet. For other organizations with a similar name, see Radio Free Asia (disambiguation).

Radio Free Asia (RFA) was a news agency operated from 1951 to 1955 by the Central Intelligence Agency, through the Committee for Free Asia, to broadcast anti-Communist propaganda.^{[1][2][3][4][5]: 120}

RFA first broadcast in 1951 from RCA facilities in Manila, Philippines. Broadcasts were made in three Chinese dialects, as well as in English.^[3] RFA maintained offices in Tokyo, and aside from in the Philippines, broadcasts were also made from Dhaka and Karachi, Pakistan. Although intended to broadcast anti-Communist propaganda into mainland China, as well as to overseas Chinese and others, the news agency faced difficulties in doing so.^[3] In mainland China personal radio ownership was low, and in other parts of Asia, radio reception was poor.^[3][1] In 1953, the Committee for Free Asia decided to terminate RFA,^[6] with it finally going off the air in 1955.^[1] However, propaganda broadcasting continued with new facilities in Seoul through Radio Of Free Asia until 1966.^[7][8]

Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia were later preserved by the Clinton Administration and repurposed into their modern iterations.^{[9][page needed]}

References

1. The New York Times. 1977-12-26. Archived from the original on 2019-07-04. Retrieved 2019-12-20. Far more obscure were two other C.I.A. broadcasting ventures, Radio Free Asia and a rather tenuous operation known as Free Cuba Radio. … [Radio Free Asia] was an arm of the Committee for Free Asia, and the C.I.A. thought of it as the beginning of an operation in the Far East that would rival Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.
2. David Welch (27 November 2013). Propaganda, Power and Persuasion: From World War I to Wikileaks. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-0-85773-737-3. from the original on August 19, 2020. Retrieved January 3, 2019.
3. Central Intelligence Agency (1 April 1953). "Memorandum For: Special Assistant to the President; International Radio Broadcasting by Radio Free Asia" (PDF). foia.cia.gov. Central Intelligence Agency. (PDF) from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
4. "Why Voice of America matters outside US". BBC News. 2016-12-15. Retrieved 2021-05-01.
5. Engelhardt, Tom (1998). The end of victory culture : cold war America and the disillusioning of a generation (2nd paperback ed.). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-133-3. Retrieved 6 July 2021. [Allen Dulles] travelled untold secret miles, addressing global audiences through a media all his own - CIA funded operations like Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Liberation, which claimed to be "private non-governmental" services.
6. Shen, Shuang. "Empire of Information: The Asia Foundation's Network and Chinese-Language Cultural Production in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia." American Quarterly 69, no. 3 (2017): 589-610. doi:10.1353/aq.2017.0052.
7. Daya Kishan Thussu: "International Communication". Continuity and Change (Arnold 2000). p. 37. ISBN 0-340-74130-9.
8. Taylor, Phillip (1997). Global Communications, International Affairs and the Media since 1945. Routledge. p. 43. ISBN 0-203-73786-5.
9. Cull, Nicholas (2003). "RFE/RL". Propaganda and Mass Persuasion. ABC-CLIO, LLC. ISBN 1-57607-820-5.

Further reading

• Defty, Andrew (2004). Britain, America and Anti-Communist Propaganda, 1945–53. The Information Research Department. Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-5443-4.