In modern Chinese vocabulary, the phrase chuban ziyou (出版自由) is used to denote the Western concept of ‘liberty of the press/freedom of the press’. However, both the Chinese words chuban (出版) and ziyou (自 由) were not used to denote ‘the press’ and ‘freedom/liberty’ respectively in Chinese literature before the nineteenth century. As a matter of fact, chuban was not a Chinese word, despite being constituted by the Chinese characters chu (出) and ban (版). Neither was chuban ziyou a concept or word in Chinese literature before the nineteenth century. The question is, where did the phrase come from, and why and how did it come to be used to denote the modern concept of ‘liberty of the press/freedom of the press’ in Chinese literature from the late nineteenth century? These questions are important, as they concern the academic issue of the formalization of the concept. Only when a country uses its national language to denote an imported alien concept does that concept really become fully transplanted into the importing country, more formally becoming a conceptual tool.

Despite previous scholars having failed to answer these questions, some still provide us with useful clues. Chinese scholar Zheng Kuangmin has indicated that there were two paths by which the Western concept of ‘freedom/liberty’ was imported into China.