Sources and Dissemination of Information about Chinese Deforestation in American President’s Annual Message to Congress in 1908

On December 8th 1908, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt used a series of photos on forest destruction and soil erosion in northern China to address the significance of forests protection in his last message to the Congress and hoped that the United States would draw a lesson from China’s deforestation, and take further measures to protect the forest. The speech and the graphics used by it were quickly spread by Chinese and foreign scholars and became an important page in the modern Sino-US forestry exchange. So, what channel does the information about the forest situation in northern China come from? And why is it quickly spread by scholars? What is the path of dissemination? This dissemination process is elaborated in detail using a large number of original English documents and pictures in this paper.