Song-Chuan Chen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9789888390564
- eISBN:
- 9789888390274
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888390564.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter observes that the Warlike party launched an informational war to penetrate the soft borders that constrained information flow and interaction. Their efforts concentrated on the Society ...
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This chapter observes that the Warlike party launched an informational war to penetrate the soft borders that constrained information flow and interaction. Their efforts concentrated on the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China, with the objective of spreading knowledge about the European world to the Chinese. They prepared, as they termed it, ‘intellectual artillery’ in the form of Chinese-language publications, especially material related to world geography, to distribute among the Chinese to inform them of the truth about the British in the hope that it would lead China to ‘open up’ from the inside. In establishing the society, the Warlike party conceived the metaphor of a war of information, which contributed to the developing conceptualisation of a literal war against China in the years before actual military action.Less
This chapter observes that the Warlike party launched an informational war to penetrate the soft borders that constrained information flow and interaction. Their efforts concentrated on the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China, with the objective of spreading knowledge about the European world to the Chinese. They prepared, as they termed it, ‘intellectual artillery’ in the form of Chinese-language publications, especially material related to world geography, to distribute among the Chinese to inform them of the truth about the British in the hope that it would lead China to ‘open up’ from the inside. In establishing the society, the Warlike party conceived the metaphor of a war of information, which contributed to the developing conceptualisation of a literal war against China in the years before actual military action.
