20世纪以来,“国民性改造”成为影响中国现代文化的主导话语之一。作为一种知识话语,有关中国国民性话语产生的源头在哪里?本文从报刊媒体与知识生产的角度,以最早在华出版的英文外报《广州记录报》和稍后的《中国丛报》为个案,从源头上探究报刊媒体与中国国民性话语生产的关系;通过梳理两家报刊有关中国的报道和评论,考察分析早期在华外报对中国国民性认知历程,揭示在华外报如何赋予“中国国民性”之内涵,以及背后的潜在动因。 Since the 20th century, “national character transformation” has become one of the leading discourses affecting modern Chinese culture. As a kind of knowledge discourse, what is the source of Chinese national discourse? In this paper, from the angle of media and knowledge production of newspapers and magazines, the first published English newspaper Guangzhou Circles and the later China Citations, As a case study, this paper explores the relationship between the press media and the production of China’s national discourse from the source. Through the reviewing the reports and reviews of the two newspapers on China, this paper examines the early cognitive history of China’s nationality by foreign newspapers in China, How to confer the connotation of “Chinese nationality” and the underlying motivation behind it.