In News under Fire Shuge Wei tells the story of the English-language international propaganda system that was constructed by the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek between 1928 and 1941. The focus is on the English-language press of China and how it covered and publicized the deteriorating relationship between China and Japan that led to open warfare by 1937. The book begins by outlining the institutional development within the government of an impressive foreign propaganda machinery. Then it is measured against the final product, i.e. the strength and effectiveness of the nationalist rhetoric coming out of the English-language press in China. Other scholars have studied the output of Western journalists working in China. The concern here is with the institutional history of the Republican government's effort to tell the Chinese story through the treaty port press – both foreign and Chinese owned. With the exception of a two-page discussion of the Left-leaning China Forum edited by Harold Isaacs, the publications under consideration are those that basically supported the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. The efforts of T'ang Leang-li, the foreign propaganda chief for the rival Wang Jingwei faction in the Nationalist government, receive minimal attention.

Wei begins by establishing the broad historical context in which the English-language media operated during the Republican period. The author also reviews in the opening chapter recent scholarship in media studies pertaining to Republican China. Her study, she argues, fills a gap in the developing scholarship on the press (Chinese and foreign) during the Republican period. The foundation of the book is a close reading of the treaty port English-language press as well as examination of archival documents in Taiwan, reports of US diplomats and officials culled from State Department archives, and Shanghai Municipal police files. She makes good use of secondary works by Chinese scholars on the subject.

In chapter two, Wei begins the chronological narrative with an excellent discussion of the Jinan 1928 crisis and why it was so important from an international propaganda perspective. The crisis pitted the new Nationalist government in China against Japan in a propaganda war to win favour in international public opinion for the first time. The results for Nanjing were not good. Its efforts were too confused and tardy. But Chiang Kai-shek learned important lessons from the Jinan crisis. Thereafter he paid considerable attention to Japan's attempt to control the international narrative about territorial expansion in China, and committed scarce resources to countering it. Increasingly Chiang turned to the man who by the mid-1930s was his international press czar – Hollington Tong (Dong Xianguang).

The author's discussion of Hollington Tong and his deft handling of international propaganda is the best and most original part of the book. Especially in chapters seven and eight, after the Anti-Japanese war was formally declared by Nanjing in 1937, we see how Hollington Tong managed the government's international propaganda with considerable success. There were good reasons for Tong's success. He was a survivor politically who could communicate with Chiang Kai-shek in his own local Zhejiang dialect. At the same time, he had a strong background in, and knowledge of, Western journalism since he had once worked for the New York Times. Tong's myriad connections to the international press and cultivation of Chiang Kai-shek's inner circle made him unique and very useful. To give just one example of his effectiveness, after 1937 Tong built up a US-based network of paid publicists (former Western missionaries and journalists) who operated effectively. It was this group that later morphed into the all-powerful “China Lobby” of the post war period.

Hollington Tong is the hero of the book. In his prime he was a master of soft power for the Nationalist government. Interestingly, Shuge Wei chooses not to go chronologically beyond Tong's high point in 1939–40. After Pearl Harbor (1941), the Anti-Japanese War took a very different turn, attracting much more international press scrutiny. And Hollington Tong lost control. During the later period, Tong had much more trouble delivering positive coverage of the Chongqing regime and its war efforts; his role became more and more that of chief censor.

In short, as institutional history Shuge Wei's study is path breaking and well researched. The manufacturing of international propaganda by the Nationalist government during the Republican period is an important, long neglected subject and the author is to be congratulated for her pioneering study.