American Understanding Of China Around The Opium War

As the most developing country and the most developed country in theworld, Both China and America occupy decisive position in today’s world. China-U.S.relations has become one of the most important bilateral relations in contemporaryinternational relations. The merchant ship named "China Queen" arrived in Chinamarked the beginning of association between China and America. With more contactswere being made between two countries, America began to detach missionaries to startmissionary work in China. Elijah Coleman Bridgman was the first missionary ofProtestant came to China. He carved out the first English periodical named The ChineseRepository that described all sides of China. Before the establishment of this periodical,American’s understanding to China mainly depended on European missionary, recordsand research results of scholars, dictation and written records of American merchantsand officers, they knew little of China and had many misunderstandings. The ChineseRepository became a key way for American to learn about China in an early stage, thearticles in the periodical made American discover a relatively truthful China, set up theexample of missionary’s researching China and made the foundation of America’sSinology. Meanwhile, The Chinese Repository represented American’s values andupheld America government’s interest to a certain extent. This paper made researchresults home and abroad as foundation, adopted methods of documents analyzing, casesstudy and history combining, analyzed The Chinese Repository establishment and alsointroduced something relate to China’s to the Americans, American’s understandingof China at The Chinese Repository establishment all around and the effect of TheChinese Repository.