THE People's Republic of China and that international flag waver for the American way of life, Voice of America (VoA), do not make obvious bedfellows.
China, along with distant cousin Cuba, is about the only country that still makes intermittent attempts at jamming VoA's shortwave signals. Still, the Government-run network, set up in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda in Europe, believes it is spreading the Western bourgeois gospel to between 60 and 100 million listeners on the Chinese mainland.
Beijing, like the other Marxist regimes that are still dotted around Asia, has learned to live with VoA. Indeed, compared to the new broadcasting threat to China's political status quo, VoA is a positive bosom pal.
Ever since the United States announced a tentative plan two years ago to launch a pan-Asian version of the Cold War anti-Communist vehicle, Radio Free Europe, China has done more than voice occasional public objections. It is said that its representatives in Washington are barely off the phone asking ''friends'' inside VoA in whispered tones what they know about the progress of the planned station.
That should not come as much of a surprise. VoA doesn't care for Radio Free Asia (RFA) much either.
Last week, RFA's friends in the US Senate pushed through a measure which will set up the station - at the speediest by early next year - for an initial outlay of US$30 million (HK$232 million). Although a Congressional conference committee still needs toiron out differences in opinion over the project, it is now a safe bet China is not going to prevail over the will of American foreign policy.
The station was originally designed to be based in California by its principal sponsor, Senator Joseph Biden, until costs appeared prohibitive. Now likely to come under one semi-Governmental umbrella in a tenuous link with VoA, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty (which targeted the former Soviet Union), RFA will broadcast mother tongue news and information programmes not only to China, but also Vietnam, Burma, Laos, North Korea, and Cambodia.