Bridging the information gap between Europe and foreign lands is shown to be an important reason that Christian missionaries contributed to the historical rise of international trade during the modern period. To prove the missionaries’ role in mitigating information barriers between China and Europe, this study focuses on the experience of historical China, where European missionaries arrived from 1580 onwards, when Foreign trade was largely banned initially. We find that following China’s opening for international trade in 1842, regions with longer past missionary presence imported more foreign goods and exported more local products, as these places had appeared more frequently in the missionaries’ letters and publications back in Europe. This talk is based on a working paper entitled “Christian Missionaries and International Trade, 1580–1936” (SSRN Working Paper Series, 5195597) in collaboration with Professor Zhiwu Chen and Professor Chicheng Ma at the HKU Business School.