When adding a new entry, please provide the name of the database, a brief annotation about its contents (as you know them), relevant links, access requirements, and any additional pertinent information. Incomplete information can be modified at a later date and/or by other researchers based on their own experience.
北大法宝
website
Description Peking University's database of PRC laws and regulations.
Access Access to full-text documents is restricted.
China Academic Journals (CAJ)
website
Description The best site for widespread searches for academic journal articles published in mainland China. The quality of journal articles, however, varies just as widely. After an initial search on keywords, the search can be further narrowed down by searching again within the results. Most articles have a PDF option and the article.
Access Requires affiliation with an institution or library that subscribes to it. Known subscribers: the Berlin State Library (through the CrossAsia project), Leiden University,
ChinaMaxx
website
Description China-based book repository website with a particularly rich collection of handbooks from the 1950s-1970s. Most books on this site can be downloaded and saved as PDFs, but the server connection and speed varies.
Access Requires affiliation with an institution or library that subscribes to it. Known subscribers: the Berlin State Library (through the CrossAsia project), Stanford University
Database for the History of Contemporary Chinese Political Movements
website
Description Includes numerous documents related to Chinese political campaigns carried out between 1949-1976, divided into four time frames: 1949-1956; 1957 (Anti-rightist campaign); 1958-1962; and the Cultural Revolution period. Compiled primarily by Chinese scholars who do not reside in mainland China and who have been collecting documents for many years. Sponsorship and funding comes mostly from U.S. universities and foundations.
Access Requires affiliation with an institution or library that subscribes to it. Known subscribers: the Berlin State Library (through the CrossAsia project), Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, UCLA
Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS)
website
Description Contains Chinese materials, including many from the PRC during the Mao years, gathered by U.S. government intelligence and translated into English. From the website: “The original mission of the FBIS was to monitor, record, transcribe and translate intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories… Many of these materials are firsthand reports of events as they occurred. Digitized from original paper copy and high-quality microfilm, this definitive online collection features full-text transcripts from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, China, Eastern and Western Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and the Soviet Union. ”
Access Requires affiliation with an institution or library that subscribes to it. Known subscribers:
The Maoist Legacy Database (MLD)
website
Description The Maoist Legacy Database is an open-access archive containing thousands of items related to the research focus - the late Mao era and post-Mao transition, in particular related to: the CCP's standards, institutions, and processes of administrating historical justice; regional variances in implementing these policies between center and periphery; and the impact of the reversal of verdicts on social stability and CCP rule. While most documents are from the Cultural Revolution period to the 1980s, coverage spans the late 1940s to the 1990s. More from the database website: “[The MLD] contains a carefully curated selection of thousands of documents and images on issues related to dealing with the legacies of the Maoist era. The documents have mostly been taken from party and state guidelines on how to deal with “lingering historical issues” (lishi yiliu wenti). These official documents have been supplemented with internally circulated collections of model cases, oral history transcripts of interviews we conducted, and other relevant materials. A selection of key documents have been translated into English to ease comparative work for scholars with no background in China studies. In compiling the database, we have strictly followed German copyright and privacy laws. The database is solely intended for scholarly, non-commercial use.”
Access Free to use for anyone who registers an account. Registration requires the user to agree to specific terms and conditions prior to use.
马克思主义文库
Chinese website
Description Collection of marxist classics in Chinese. Includes translations of the fundamentals of marxist theory as well as contributions by Chinese marxists. Related to the site Marxists Internet Archive (in English).
Renmin Ribao
website
Description Essentially the entire collection, which can be searched using various criteria (date, keywords, etc). Like CAJ, the RMRB search engine also allows searching within results in order to continue narrowing down results through keywords. Keywords are then highlighted within the text of articles found in the search results. In most cases, there's also a PDF link to an image of the actual page from the newspaper at the time, often worth checking out for accompanying photographs, types of articles placed adjacent to another, and in order to gather a broader context for other events or campaigns taking place at the time.
Access Requires affiliation with an institution or library that subscribes to it. Known subscribers: the Berlin State Library (through the CrossAsia project), Stanford University,
SEDAC China Dimensions data collection
website
Description From the website: “You will find a variety of socioeconomic data in this site, including Geographic Information System (GIS) databases that cover the administrative regions of China, presented at a scale of 1:1,000,000. These databases may be integrated with agricultural, land use, environmental, and socioeconomic data to track China's economic growth, population increases, and environmental change.”
Wanfang New Local Gazetteers
website
Description The introduction states that this site “currently contains over 26,385 volumes of Chinese gazetteer books, covering 31 provinces and autonomous regions. The database provides detailed geographic and historical records of provinces, prefectures, cities, and smaller district administration units” including “historical as well as contemporary facts related to the geographical areas, concerning general surveys, 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.” A keyword search brings up long lists of results, but only the pages with the keyword are shown (not the whole publication). Use the PDF icon to the left of each result to quickly view, download, or save individual results.
Access Requires affiliation with an institution or library that subscribes to it. Known subscribers: the Berlin State Library (through the CrossAsia project)
Zhaiyi Database
website
Description From the website: “The Institute of Chinese Studies Heidelberg holds a full run of Zhaiyi (Selected Translations). Because it will not be found in the great collections outside the PRC and is of interest for the study of Chinese literary and cultural interactions with the world at a time when such interactions were at a low ebb, it is made accessible on-line here for scholarly research in a fully searchable version. Zhaiyi was “internally published” by the Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe from late 1973 to the end of 1976. It belonged to a group of journals starting publication in Shanghai around the same time, namely the literary journal Zhaoxia 朝霞 (Morning Dawn), a journal devoted to theoretical questions of science and philosophy, Ziran bianzhengfa 自认辩证法 (Dialectics of Nature), and a journal of political theory and criticism, Xuexi yu pipan 学习与批判 (Study and Critique). These were not marked as “internally published,” but they were all also discontinued shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution.”
Access Free, but requires registration. Once you register you'll receive a username and password via email from the Heidelberg Centre for East Asian Studies.
中国改革信息库
website
Description Digital Archive with information on the Chinese Reform Era (1976-). Contains everything from policy documents and statistics to photos and interview recordings.
Access Free.
Old HK Newspapers
website
Description The Old Hong Kong Newspapers Collection is a selective collection of major old Hong Kong Newspapers published from early Hong Kong to nowadays, aiming at preserving historical news reporting of Hong Kong for reference and research.
Access Free.