Abstract
What was the social composition of the U.S. correspondents in China during the first half of twentieth century? Borrowing Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of capital and adopting the collective biography approach, this study analyzed the demographic characteristics and career paths of 161 correspondents to illustrate the opportunity structure and its historical variations in the largely unstructured field of foreign correspondence during its formative years. Being a missionary kid, having a journalism education, especially from the Missouri School of Journalism, or being raised in the northeast region with an Ivy League education, were among the kinds of valued social and cultural capital that conferred an advantage in becoming a China correspondent.
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