THE comparatively new Chinese newspaper industry might still seem like a youngster compared with its long-standing foreign counterparts, but with respect to news coverage and the speed of transmission of remote news releases, Chinese newspapers are apparently second to none.

　　Such great progress could not have been easily achieved without the introduction of the ubiquitous World Wide Web. It is the Internet - the largest resource sharing apparatus in the world - that can make news releases available worldwide in less than a minute.

　　To sum up, it is the Information Age that has led to a second forward leap for the newspaper industry, but it is also the Information Age that has forced the hero of the first leap, the telegraph, to step down from the stage of history.

　　In the early 19th century posted letters were the basic means used by newspapers to exchange information with their correspondents stationed in different bureaus around the country. Due to the underdeveloped state of transportation, an important news release faced becoming outdated after a 20- to 40-day delay.

　　Thanks to the launching of two cable telegraph lines in Shanghai, the local newspaper station was able to adapt and provide a better service using this time-saving device. The first line ran from Shanghai, through Xiamen in East China's Fujian Province and Hong Kong, then to European countries, while the second ran through Nagasaki in Japan to other countries around the North Pacific Ocean.

　　January 30, 1874 was an epoch-making day in the history of the Chinese newspaper industry as that day's issue of the Shen Bao Daily, the most prestigious local newspaper of the time, carried the first cable report in China, although it was only a news brief about a British Cabinet reshuffle.

　　With the completion of the Shanghai-Tianjin cable line in December 1881, cable dispatching became widely accepted and frequently used by newspaper reporters. From then on, as more lines were launched, more time was saved.

　　Sometimes the news came unexpectedly fast, just after the publishing of the daily issue. As calling back to add more news in the newspaper was impossible, clever editors decided to publish a supplementary newspaper in addition to the normal one. This kind of issue was called a haowai which meant "extra" newspaper in Chinese. These papers were enormously popular, especially during times of war.

　　The first two haowai's were published by the North China Daily News and The Shanghai Courier, two local English-language newspapers operating at the beginning of the Sino-French War.

　　The Shen Bao Daily lost no time in joining the competition. It published its first haowai at 7:00pm in the evening of August 6, 1884, with a story about the military situation of the Sino-French Mawei naval battle, sent by its war correspondents in Fujian Province.

　　Although the old cable lines have now been abandoned or demolished, their great contribution still marks an unforgettable chapter in the annals of the newspaper industry.