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Online and on China: Research Sources in the Information Age*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

M. Taylor Fravel
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Extract

The availability of sources has repeatedly shaped the academic study of contemporary China. In the 1950s and early 1960s scholars relied heavily on official Chinese government sources, which were often accessed through U.S. government translation series. By the mid-1960s, researchers began to draw upon a broader range of Chinese media, especially from the provincial and local levels, as well as interviews with refugees and legal immigrants conducted at the Union Research Institute and Universities Service Centre in Hong Kong. Access to Cultural Revolution materials in the 1970s, particularly revealing Red Guard newspapers and unauthorized collections of Communist Party documents and Politburo member speeches, added an additional level of understanding. The opening of China to fieldwork in 1979 prompted research programmes such as Zouping county, while the use of mainland libraries and archives provided access to an even wider range of materials. Since the late 1980s, as mainland researchers began to examine their society and its recent past, Chinese scholarly writings have offered a new level of detail and rigour that was previously unavailable.

Type
Research Developments
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 163 , September 2000 , pp. 821 - 842
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2000

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References

1. For an overview of the generations of scholarship, see Harding, Harry, “Toward a third generation of scholarship,” in World Politics, No. 36, (01 1984), pp. 284–301Google Scholar and Harding, Harry, “The evolution of scholarship on contemporary China,” in Shambaugh, David (ed.), American Study of Contemporary China (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993), pp. 14–42.Google Scholar

2. For a survey of information sources used during the 1950s and 1960s, see Oksenberg, Michel, “Sources and methodological problems in the study of contemporary China,” in Barnett, A. Doak (ed.), Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Washington D.C.: University of Washington Press, 1969), pp. 577–606.Google Scholar For a survey of information sources in the 1970s and 1980s, see Oksenberg, Michel, “Politics takes command: an essay on the study of post-1949 China,” in MacFarquhar, Roderick and Fairbank, John K. (eds.), The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 14 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 543–591.Google Scholar

3. See, for example, Walder, Andrew (ed.), Zouping in Transition: The Process of Reform in Rural North China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

4. The detention and arrest in 1999 of Song Yongyi, a U.S.-based Chinese academic, unfortunately demonstrates the limits of this openness.

5. In this article, web sites will be cited without the customary “http://” prefix. In general, there is more support for using the Chinese language on PC systems than on the Mac. For more information about computing in Chinese, see www.chinesecomputing.com and www.mandarintools.com.

6. These software packages will also automatically configure the web browser to display Chinese characters, removing the need for the process described in the preceding paragraph.

7. The Microsoft Global Input Editor interface will also work with Office 2000 and Outlook Express, which eliminates the need to purchase the software packages described above. Users can download with the input editor along with the relevant Chinese-font packages.

8. Oksenberg, , “Politics takes command,” p. 544.Google Scholar

9. The other main portals all offer similar news channels on their sites, which post news from other sources. News channels are provided by Sina.com (dailynews.sina.com.cn/), Netease (www.netease.com/news/index.html) and Yahoo China (cn.yahoo.com/headlines/).

10. “Domain name statistics,” China National Network Information Centre, December 1999, www.cnnic.net.cn/registration/tongji.shtml. The actual number of government agency homepages is probably much higher than the domain name figure suggests, as the “com” and “net” domains are widely used by many such agencies.

11. The History and Language category includes sub-headings for language, literature, art, history, geography, philosophy and culture. The Economics, Politics and Law category includes sub-headings for economics, agricultural economics, industrial economics, transpiration/post and communications/trade economics, finance, political theory, party construction, foreign affairs, military affairs, mass organizations, public security, law and jurisprudence.

12. While a through check has not been conducted, the online version appears to contain all of the information of the print edition, with the one very important exception of explanatory notes.

13. Users need to download Adobe Acrobat to view PDF files. Acrobat is available from www.adobe.com.

14. “List of top ten outstanding web sites,” China National Network Information Centre, January 2000, www.cnnic.net.cn/develst/cnnic2000toplO.shtml.

15. Prior to the tenth anniversary of Tiananmen in 1999, the portal Sohu closed one of its chat-rooms. While the stated reason was for maintenance, an employee was reported to have stated that the reason was concern about anti-government postings. In general, however, reported instances of such self-censorship are rare. See Reuters, , “Chat shuttered on Tiananmen anniversary” (1 06 1999)Google Scholar available through CNET, news.cnet.com/news/ 0- 1005–200–343097.html?tag=st.cn.1.