Semi-Colonialism, Transnational Networks and News Flows in Early Republican Shanghai * Bryna Goodman Abstract This paper surveys May Fourth newspaper culture in Shanghai in order to highlight the politics of transnational networks and news flows. The issue of newspaper identity is murky because of Shanghai newspapers’ heavy reliance on translation and on news agencies, and because Chinese newspapers made strategic use of foreign registration and ownership. The surface language of newspapers could be equally strategic. Japanese published Chinese newspapers, and Chinese published newspapers in English. Through close examination of one Chinese-language newspaper, the Shangbao, together with the recently-opened papers of the Russian Jewish American journalist George Sokolsky, the author outlines some of the ambiguities of transnational human networks (involving Chinese, long-term expatriate foreigners, and overseas Chinese) and news flows that invested Chinese newspaper culture during The China Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring 2004), 55–88 Bryna GOODMAN is Associate Professor of History at the University of Oregon. Her published work explores native-place, urban and national identities; the con- stitution of a new public realm in 1920s Shanghai; and public understandings of Shanghai’s early Chinese stock market. Her current research examines an early Republican-era suicide case as a window onto Shanghai newspaper culture, associational life, and understandings of gender, economics and legal process. * I am grateful for the comments and suggestions of two anonymous readers for China Review, as well as Cynthia Brokaw, Arif Dirlik, Dick Kraus, Wendy Larson, Elizabeth Perry, Elizabeth Sinn, Jeff Wasserstrom and Zhang Xudong. I would also like to thank Joshua Fogel, Joan Judge and Ishikawa Toshihiro for helping me locate Japanese newspapers from Shanghai.