The Chinese gazette as a publicly available government publication was distributed in a variety of formats since the twelfth century. Little is known, however, about its form and content before 1800. By looking at China from the periphery, this study shows how European sources offer a unique way of expanding the knowledge about the gazette of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its interconnected history illustrates how the Chinese gazette, as translated by European missionaries, became a major source for reflections on state and society by Enlightenment thinkers. It thus joined a global public much earlier than so far assumed.