Prison reform is an integral part of the modernization of China’s legal system. In the process of prison reform, China and the West are connected and interacted through various media. The investigative diary and telegraphic diary from ambassadors and envoys of Late Qing brought the western prison model to China, and constructed the archives of western experience for the reform of Chinese prisons. The judicial practice of China prison reform and the present and spread of China model prisons by official newspapers have formed structural coupling in form of central-local system, and thus the official newspaper has become “competitive stage” for China model prisons. As a kind of architecture medium, model prison brings China into the world system of visual governance in way of space construction and visual observation. In the view of global history, the formation and diffusion of model prison provides the way to understand the meaning of “interconnection” by media between modern China and the world. Interconnection not only means the dynamics of information flow, value transmission and power expansion by multiple media hybridity, but also means the active role of the dynamic mechanism formed by media production in world hierarchical order.