The paper was started by Ernest Major (1841-1908), in 1872. Major was a British businessman. "Shen Bao" was one of the first modern Chinese newspapers. Major returned to England in 1899, and the newspaper was reorganised to be Major Company Limited. According to Zhou, Major was different from other foreign newspapers in two areas: From the start, he made it clear, that the newspaper would be for Chinese readers, and not for foreigners. He therefore picked those news and issues that would be interesting to Chinese. Secondly, he made Chinese compradors responsible for running the business and he had Chinese editors select the news and write the editorials. He was very successful: The Chinese compradors used their ties with the community, raised the circulation, and obtained advertisements. This made the paper cheaper than those of the competition. The Chinese editors knew what their readers wanted to read about.