ABSTRACT
It took more than one thousand years, in China, to challenge DiBao’s monopoly of the press along with its privileged minority readership. Although domestic forces certainly contributed to the declining of the empire, the effective influences by and large came from the outside world. It was Protestant missionaries of the nineteenth century who first turned the new page of Chinese journalism’s history. Following this, the initiatives were taken over by Chinese scholars. Before exploring the Protestant influences on the rising modern press in nineteenth-century China, we should consider the impact of Christian pioneers – the Jesuits arriving in China at the end of the sixteenth century who established the first extensive cultural contact between China and Europe.
