Offering an entirely new approach to understanding China's journalism history, this book covers the Chinese periodical press in the first half of the twentieth century. Analysing modern Chinese history through the lens of the newspaper, this book presents an interdisciplinary and international approach to studying mass communications.

Qiliang He is Associate Professor of History at Illinois State University. He has published several books, including Feminism, Women's Agency, and Communication-The Case of Huang-Lu Elopement (2018) and Gilded Voices: Economics, Politics, and Storytelling in the Yangzi Delta since 1949 (2012).

Introduction Part I 1917: Hu Zhengzhi, Dagong bao, and Literati cum Political Commentators 1. Between Literati and Journalists: Hu Zhengzhi and Dagong bao in the Late 1920s Part II 1917: Missouri-style Journalism Education and Liberals in Republican China 2. From Missouri to Shanghai: Maurice E. Votaw and the Transplantation of American Journalism Education to China in the Republican Times 3. Between Liberalism and Censorship: Ma Xingye and the Central Daily News, the 1920s-1940s Part III 1917: Xiaobao, Public Sphere, and News Network 4. The Birth of a Republic: The 1917 Courtesan Election and the Rise of a Public Sphere in the Xiaobao Press 5. The Murder of Lianying: News, News Network, and Modernity in 1920s Shanghai Afterword: From the Use of the Newspaper to the Use of the Internet