The Study Of International News Comments On Shenbao Before The Reform Movement Of 1898

Shenbao was a commercial newspaper invested by foreign businessmen during the late Qing dynasty. It was founded in 1872. Shenbao had an obviously characteristic that it paid special attention to comments, and international news comments played an important role in this column. In the last 30 years of the 19th century, the changes of international environment promoted the international communication to update continuously. This provided rich themes and content for the international news comments on Shenbao, and objectively put forward the requirement to enhance the level of international news comments. Meanwhile, Chinese people had the urgent need to know the world and newspaper needed to survive in the market competition, both of these became powerful booster for the development of the international news comments on Shenbao.The international news comments on Shenbao had extremely broad eye view, and paid attention to several countries in Europe,Africa,Asia,North and South America etc. During 70 to 90 years in the 19th century, Shenbao had published related comments about all the major international events. Face to the external exchanges environment which was getting complex, Shenbao focused on the relationship between other countries and china, and its main issues including the Coolie Trade,Anti-Christianity Cases,vassal state problems,external wars that represented by Sino-French War and the Sino-Japanese War etc. as a type of newspaper passage, international news comments experienced 3 different stages as starting,developing and forming stable models. It reduced the color of Chinese traditional political comments, and insisted on commenting with justice. When facing to the colonial invade from western, it behaved strongly patriotic spirit and sense of justice.Maintenance and enhancing the domination of Qing Dynasty, it is the political information behind the viewpoint information of the international news comments on Shenbao. When it commented international issues, it still regarded traditional Chinese culture as framework. It high praised ritual system, and claimed to be loyal to the emperor and kindhearted etc. Because the newspaper chief editors who changed from Chinese traditional intellectual had the history limitation of knowledge, when came to comment the international events, they had some shortcomings, such as just concerning with the surface of international issues, seldom extending to interpret the politics and economics reason behind the international incidents. However, Shenbao came to the historical stage as a commercial newspaper with foreign investment, it adhered to stand in the position of Chinese people, commented with fair,open attitude and clearly patriotic spirit, observed the trend of the international political situation with global perspective, built the interaction relationship between media and international social change through the press statements, enlightened Chinese people, provided public opinion reference to the Gentry. It promoted the development of modern Chinese journalism, while also promoted the growth of the intellectual editors.