Between Shanghai and Sikkim

In the 1880s, Britain aimed to expand its influence in the western interior of China by extending trade routes to Tibet via Sikkim and to Chongqing via the upper Yangtze River, competing with other Powers. The North-China Herald , a prominent Shanghai newspaper, focused on the S.S. Kuling Project to promote the opening of Chongqing to foreign trade by introducing a steamship to the upper river but provided limited coverage of the Sikkim Crisis that occurred almost simultaneously. The newspaper&s;s editor, Robert William Little, was closely connected to the project, as his brother Archibald J. Little initiated the Kuling project. This chapter examines the editorials, correspondence from the British legation, and family letters of the editor and analyses how news coverage was made and influenced diplomatic decisions. It concludes that the North-China Herald played a loose and arbitrary role in Sino-British diplomacy, serving specific local interests rather than a unanimous interests group. Despite this, commercial interests leveraged newspaper discourse to constrain British diplomats’ discretion and impact efforts for a peaceful status quo in Sino-British relations. Consequently, English-language newspapers participated in expanding the treaty-port system&s;s boundaries during this period.