China discovered the advantages of the art of printing before Europe did. Embryonic forms of newspapers such as edicts, newsletters and the like circulated throughout the Empire long before Guttenberg had made his invention. However, A Abelha da China, the first modem newspaper printed on the Chinese continent was only published in Macau in the 1820s. Macau, therefore, was the first Asian port through which these methods of printing were introduced.
Over one hundred and fifty years have passed since the publication of the first issue of A Abelha da China on the 12th of September, 1822. It is generally regarded as the first newspaper to have been printed in Macau and there are even some references to it as the first modern newspaper published on the Chinese continent. Despite this, references to A Abelha da China in the history of the Chinese press are scarce.
The articles presented in this issue of Revista de Cultura attempt to give a general idea of the early days of the Chinese press. They emphasize also the pioneering role of A Abelha da China and Macau's historic role as a centre of modem and innovative ideas in Southern China.
The introduction of the periodic press in the northern parts of China is closely related to the introduction of European printing techniques in China. These were taken via Macau in the sixteenth century by the Jesuit, Alexander Valignano. This innovative European technology had a remarkable influence throughout the Orient, from India to Japan, including, of course, the Philippines and China. With understandable delays caused by geographic and cultural distances, the Far East also joined the Guttenberg revolution, the era of written civilization. Through this historic process, common printing techniques enabled the Church to exploit a situation that had been hinted at ever since the Bible, the original 'Book' in the Western tradition, had recorded what mankind's ancient oral traditions had lost.
Serving the primarily educational aims of the Catholic Orders and Protestant Missions, the publishing centres that developed here were always linked to the plans of the religious houses. Enjoying, as Macau did, both freedom and a tradition of printing, the city distinguished itself early on in the eighteenth century as an important centre of periodic press due to the fact that several printing companies which had been banned in Canton took refuge in Macau until they could find a safe haven in Hong Kong. It was in Macau that the modem European study of China gained firmer ground and one of the first expressions of this situation was the magazine Chinese Repository.
As political awareness grew in Western countries, the so-called 'modern press' emerged. Newspapers were organs conveying messages from political groups and they spread as fast as the various projects for structuring a new society appeared. They played an important role in supporting the division of power once the unity of the State in the Ancien Régime had been broken. The power of newspapers and the number of copies printed grew with the introduction of movable metal type, thus helping to spread in Europe and on the New Continent the revolutionary ideas which had sprung up in France in the late eighteenth century.
Catering to growing pressures and demands for information both subjective and objective, newspapers developed from being weekly to daily publications and gained the characteristic features of today's press: periodicity, up-to-the-minute information and variety. With the institutionalization of freedom of speech, modem papers conveyed increasingly political and ideological messages and often acted as spokesmen for the forces opposing the reigning governments, systems or powers.
In historical terms, the modem press is seen as the source of systematic political propaganda. In Portugal, the first periodical also arose due to the propaganda needs of the Restoration Movement. It is worth noting that the Gazeta da Restauração was published only in November 1641, nearly one year after the revolutionary movement had begun, when political conditions allowed some freedom, long anticipated by other discreet publications which hoped to revive national pride.
Therefore, the modern press is closely related to the characteristics and political evolution of European society. When it was introduced to Asia, the modem press brought new ideas which confronted societies organized according to a different order. This order featured a divine bureaucracy with a son of God as the maximum agent on earth. In view of this system, it comes as no surprise that the Abelha da China was a novelty in that it confronted a totalitarian and unitarian state structure. It voiced the ideas and criticisms of a group of people who opposed the government.
The A Abelha da China was the pioneer of modern journalism in this region and paved the way for many other papers on the Chinese continent, creating a publishing movement which, towards the end of the eighteenth century, fought for the modernization of China and the fall of the Qing dynasty.
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