Evidence status: retrospective first-person/editor testimony supported by later interview and biographical reporting. The original September 17, 1997 email carrier, full headers, masthead and complete issue text have not yet been recovered.
Li Hongkuan has repeatedly described September 17, 1997 as the date on which the first formal electronic magazine was sent under the name Dacankao / 大参考. In a 2011 interview he explicitly recalled that date as the first formal issue using the name.
Origin account
A 2003 interview/profile gives additional context: during the Chinese Communist Party’s 15th Party Congress, Li packaged a circulating open letter from Zhao Ziyang with two other articles and sent the material to more than 20,000 email addresses. It identifies September 17, 1997 as the date the overseas Dacankao publication was born.
A Radio Free Asia interview broadcast in 2000 and later republished describes Dacankao as an electronic weekly founded in September 1997. This independently supports the month and early-publication history without supplying an original carrier file.
Provenance boundary
This record establishes a supported origin date and first-formal-publication claim; it does not claim recovery of the original issue object. P1 will only publish a verbatim transcription, full masthead or message headers after a preserved carrier or independently authenticated archival copy is recovered.
Sources
- 2011 interview with Li Hongkuan
- 2003 interview/profile on Dacankao’s origin
- Radio Free Asia interview, broadcast February 2, 2000, republished transcript
1997 VIP Reference / Dacankao archive · VIP Reference Historical Archive