Foreign-language periodicals | Qing dynasty used Macau press for intelligence on foreigners

The European Union Academic Program – Macau (EUAP-M) organized a talk last week at the University of Macau (UM) on the development of the press in the territory during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The talk, entitled “Early Press in Macau: Claiming Autonomy and Identity in an International Context,” was delivered by Cátia Miriam Costa from the Centre for International Studies in Lisbon, who stated that the early English newspapers in Macau played an important part in intelligence gathering during the Qing dynasty.
Starting from the foundation of Macau’s first periodical publication in 1822, Costa traced the early history of the territory’s press, detailing the simultaneous evolution of English, Portuguese and Chinese-
language newspapers.
She noted that aside from the noteworthy influence of the Portuguese and Chinese newspapers in the territory, the English-language press was circulated in southern China where the publication of many other early periodicals was not permitted.
“It was a way of disseminating information to the Mainland’s Canton province,” Costa explained during the seminar.
“They [foreign media] also contributed to China in the early 20th century in the new cultural movement, when they [China] sought to adopt new innovations and modern concepts,” added Agnes Lam, a lawmaker in the Legislative Assembly and an associate professor at UM, who chaired a panel discussion after the talk.
Lam was speaking jointly about English and Portuguese-­language newspapers in the territory.

Cátia Miriam Costa

“At that time, the Chinese were seeking to gather some foreign intelligence so they collected the foreign newspapers from Macau, collated them and sent them to the Emperor […] China used them to understand what was going on in the region in terms of intelligence […] and to understand the British,” clarified Lam.
During this era, English-language publications mainly detailed missionary and business interests, such as shipping information and rules for trading in and around the territories of Macau and Hong Kong.
“Firstly the Jesuits printed [in Macau], then the religious settlers, and then traders such as the British East India Company, and other Chinese traders from Guangdong,” she added.
On another level, the English press across Asia represented a deeper geopolitical struggle for influence between British and American rival interests on the continent. The British were wary of the Americans trying to get a foothold in southern China, explained Costa.
The Lisbon-based researcher attributed the rise of modern periodicals in Macau to much of the same trends and movements that were sweeping around the world during the 19th century: the trio of liberalism, republicanism and Catholicism.
These prevalent ideas influenced the founders and writers of foreign-language publications in Macau, eventually culminating in growing demands for autonomy and independence in the territory.
“All the Portuguese and English newspapers [in Macau] are considered ‘foreign’ papers among the Chinese,” said Agnes Lam, “even those with distinctly Macau-based roots. [However] the Chinese press in Macau were Chinese… without [reflecting] a local identity from Macau.”
“It was the non-Chinese periodicals which were those to claim some independent identity for Macau,” added Lam, continuing on to say “ideas of separatism, independence and liberty grew with the proliferation of these periodicals.”
While the Portuguese media predated the English-language periodicals in Macau, most of them “did not last very long” and were governed by the Portuguese administration that only granted select outlets permission to print.
Nevertheless, between 1822 and 1930, 51 newspapers and magazines were established, representing an average of a new periodical about every two years.
Macau-based periodicals matured and in time developed strong reputations in the Asia-Pacific and an extensive outreach. As many as 22 papers published in Macau were distributed to Hong Kong and Shanghai, and some, by the final decades of the 100-year period, had spread as far as Hawaii and San Francisco.