"Lat Pau", the first Chinese newspaper in Singapore launched in 1881 by See Ewe Lay, a Peranakan Chinese comprador, who recruited Yeh Chi-Yun, a literati from China, to preside over the editorial operations. The newspaper presented Nanyang (Southern Oceans) as a nation-state extending Chinese civilization in its modernization process, thus serving to cultivate a gradually clear Chinese consciousness. Based on data analysis of Lat Pau (1881-1911) and See Ewe Lay's family backgrounds, this paper explores the impacts of such a media projection of Singapore via the functioning of print capitalism. It finds that western values of modernity were translated and introduced more smoothly to the Chinese society in a way that echoed traditional Chinese values. In the process, the collective consciousness in Chinese nationalism has been reinforced, while the cultivation of individual subjectivity for cultural modernity tended to be suppressed.