Contemporary Chinese Studies: Primary Sources

Includes historical documents such as the Party's Constitutions over the years and party internal files; documents from the Communist Party's National Congress since 1921, including reports, name lists, pictures, news reports and commentaries, audio/video files and other research materials, totaling over 3 million characters; publications of legendary leaders including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Ren Bishi, Deng Xiaoping, and Chen Yun; daily activities of current party elites since 1989; historical events in the Party history since 1921; and Who's Who in the Communist Party over the years.

Types of material include addresses and speeches, annual reports, catalogues, examinations, guides, lecture notes, letters, magazine articles, and minutes. Themes covered by the collection include the arts, the Chinese diaspora (including the Chinese in California), education, the foreign presence in China, foreign relations and diplomacy, governance, international conflict, language and literature, leisure, missionaries, opium, rebellion and revolution, science and medicine, trade, and travel and exploration.

The collection provides a wide variety of original source material detailing China's interaction with the West from Macartney's first Embassy to China in 1793, through to the Nixon/Heath visits to China in 1972-74. It is based on substantial collections of unique manuscript materials held at the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the British Library, with additional sources from other major universities.

The collection covers historical as well as contemporary facts related to the geographical areas, economy, public finance, governance, public security, urban and rural development, agriculture, industry, transportation, business, natural science, social science, education, culture and sports, public health, etc.

This collection of old journals contains journal titles and issues published in China from the late Qing Dynasty to 1949. Subject content covered includes, but is not limited to, philosophy, economics, politics, military, literature, history, industry, agriculture, geography and medicine. Well-known titles include The Young Companion, Huang Pu, and Wan Guo Gong Bao.

The database is made up of Communist Party documents, speeches of Mao Zedong and other leaders, important newspaper and magazine articles, documents of the Red Guards, and more. The materials are indexed in both English and Chinese; however, the entire body of literature is only available in Chinese.

Also includes a chronology, glossary of names, events, special terms, and a bibliography for each collection developed around a specific event, controversy, or policy decision.

These formerly restricted British government documents, consisting of diplomatic dispatches, letters, newspaper cuttings, maps, reports of court cases, biographies of leading personalities, summaries of events and diverse other materials, provide unprecedented levels of detail into one of the most turbulent centuries of Chinese history. Historical events covered include the Long March, civil war in China and the Manchurian Crisis, Japanese war, the seeds of communist victory, the Communist revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.

Included are critical perspectives on the ending of more than 2,000 years of imperial rule in China, the Taiping Rebellion, the Opium Wars with Great Britain, the Boxer Rebellion and the events leading up to the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, and the subsequent founding of the Republic of China. In addition to the article content, the full-image newspapers offer searchable access to advertisements, editorials, cartoons, and classified ads that illuminate history.