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1 - The Enlightenment of the West

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2020

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Summary

Abstract

This chapter examines the introduction of the Western concept of press freedom into imperial China. The initial introduction of freedom of the press was a product of the transnational interaction between China and the West in the nineteenth century. From the 1830s, Western businessmen, European Protestant missionaries, and Chinese diplomats introduced scattered ideas of press freedom into China, though these had very little influence at the time. This chapter documents this initial process of conceptual transplantation and summarizes the differing interpretations of press freedom through an in-depth textual analysis of primary sources.

Keywords: translation, imperial China, newspapers, missionary publishing industry, liberty, media history

China in a Transitional Period

On 30 June 1906, the newspaper Shenbao published an editorial observing that ‘large numbers of books have been translated from the East and the West, and through this, modern knowledge has flowed into China at the same time. When Chinese literates write articles they use new vocabulary here and there, which has even changed the classic style of Chinese writings.’ This statement highlights that numerous alien concepts had been introduced into China, becoming trendy and popular notions that were utilized by Chinese literates. It also identifies that those concepts came from ‘the East’ and ‘the West’.

The notions of ‘the East’ and ‘the West’ were geographical indicators based on the historical presumption that China was the centre of the world. From the tenth century, Chinese people began to think of their land as being at the centre of the map. They traded with other countries and generalized them as ‘the Eastern countries’ and ‘the Western countries’ based on this. As Chinese scholars noted in the nineteenth century, ‘the notions of “the South” and “the North” [were] unchanged, but the “the East” and “the West” [were] changing diachronically’. From the very beginning, the geographical location of ‘the West’ referred to locations to the west of Yümen, now a city in Gansu province, and with the development of the Silk Road the word was particularly used to refer to the western Asian nations. After the first and the second industrial revolutions, the notion of ‘the West’ began to refer to European countries as they exerted a stronger influence on Chinese modernity.

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Chapter
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Freedom of the Press in China
A Conceptual History, 1831–1949
, pp. 39 - 62
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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