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According to Songchuan Chen’s essay, “An Information War Waged by Merchants and Missionaries at Canton: The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China, 1834-1839,” while the increased ability to disseminate mass printed materials had notable effects within Europe, it also had a substantive impact upon the ways in which Europeans interacted with foreigners. The Qing Dynasty in China met with considerable resistance when it attempted to create protective trade barriers to prevent the facilitation of opium trade between itself and Europe. Of course, this eventually resulted in the decisive military conflict, ending in a victory of British economic interests.
But even before that, the British engaged in a war for Chinese hearts and minds. As noted by Chen, in British thought and writing, it was assumed that the Chinese regarded the British as uncultured barbarians, although this was a highly schematic view of how the Chinese actually perceived the outside world. This resulted in the establishment of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China (1834-1839), a society which, of course, considered useful knowledge the type that would support a highly Eurocentric worldview. A good example of the perspective of the society was its attempt to “teach...
The Society framed the conflict between the Chinese leadership and the West as that of ignorance versus experience, rather than addressed the genuine potential security concerns of the Chinese.
It should be noted, however, that the Society did research the book market within China to better understand what the Chinese were actually reading, including the Yellow Calendar (a kind of almanac) and Collections of Useful Information (Chen 1715). The Qing Dynasty had placed a ban on all foreign publications and ultimately all material of the society had to be printed in Singapore. Regardless, the fact that the Qing had aggressively worked to prevent foreigners from gaining control over the hearts and minds of the populace through its regulation of the book trade highlights the extent to which it took the threat of European intellectual propaganda quite seriously. Chinese booksellers were likewise prohibited from disseminating books published by foreigners, which meant that the Society, despite its secular mission, was forced to adopt a similar method as European missionaries and personally disseminate copies of their material on a one-on-one basis. The fact that…
The Nature of the Book Trade between China and France Introduction In the past, it was apparent that the Chinese government’s approach to matters culture and art did not significantly differ from its stance on a variety of other factors that involved various internal affairs of the nation. However, while it may have exercised some control on the distribution aspect of culture and art, it has largely remained ineffective as far as
Fall of the Samurai: From the Tokugawa to Early Modern Japan Fall of The Samurai: From The Tokugawa Era to Early Modern Japan Japanese samurai are counted among the world's most popular military forces; they emerged in pre-medieval times and were active from the seventh to late nineteenth century. The samurai were initially employed as mercenaries, but quickly evolved to become the Japanese Empire's chief military force; before long, they transformed, in
I do not approve of reading so many books. The method of examination is a method of dealing with the enemy. It is most harmful and should be stopped" (Johnson 1992:552). Mao wanted control of China's destiny -- and he wanted that destiny out of the hands of the religionists, whose doctrine was not formulated by him but by an outside body. Thus, places like Sacred Heart convent in
Significance of the Study This study is significant because it sheds light on a very important contributor to local and international trade. Trade fairs have a long history in providing a meeting place for buyers and sellers. They are an important channel of communication for B2B buyers and sellers. This is a significant area for study because there are limited channels of communication between B2B buyers and sellers. The previous sections
China Is China a status quo or aggressive power? Johnston (2013) argues that China's allegedly new assertiveness is nothing of the sort. He makes the case that this view underestimates the aggressiveness of past Chinese foreign policy, and that the country has not really changed its level of assertiveness. This aligns with the explanations that Fravel (2007) has of past hard power that China has used in border disputes, which also highlights
China's Intellectual Property Rights: Current Issues, Strategic Considerations And Problem Solving In this paper, the focus is primarily on the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) that are given to individuals within the Republic of China. The paper starts off by defining IPR and the different ways that IPR is provided like copyright infringement. The paper them moves on to define IPR and its progression in China through the imperialistic years, the era