A List of Useful Databases for Finding Scholarly Articles
Use the databases listed below to search for scholarly articles on your research topic. Hovering over the "info" icon 
will reveal detailed information about each database. For some very helpful tips on how to conduct a successful database search, click Here.
TIP: Use multiple databases when searching for articles related to your research project as each database has different coverage and unique features.
The Encyclopedia of Taiwan Studies contains almost 600 entries providing a portal to the multifaceted world of Taiwan history, politics, arts, literature, society, and culture.
This current version contains the first 5 of 15 projected sections. Brill will release of the rest of the content in two additional installments over 2024.
Databases for Finding Scholarly Articles in Chinese
The CNKI Database (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) is a very comprehensive database for finding full-text scholarly articles in Chinese. BYU has access to journals in literature, history, and philosophy. To see only content to which we subscribe, click the "Subscribed" option at the top right of the upper menu on the database homepage.
China Online Journals (COJ) by Wangfang Data provides access to 237 Chinese university journals in Humanities and Social Sciences and 370 scholarly journals in the Arts and Humanities published in the People’s Republic of China. Articles are full-text and can be printed, down-loaded, or e-mailed. Searching is done in Chinese.
National Social Sciences Database (China) provides current access to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) core journals. Many journals provide full-text links to article PDF files, others just provide citations (use Interlibrary Loan to request a copy of these). To make use of some features you will need to create a personal login (username and password). Searching is done in Chinese.
Airiti Library: Search this database to find citations for articles published in academic journals from Taiwan. After discovering an article you want, request a copy through Interlibrary Loan; this database does not provide access to full text articles.
Columbia University, Education for Educators: Chinese Primary Sources in English Translation Organized Chronologically, covers material from Shang Dynasty 1200 BC to the late 20th Century. Includes Discussion Questions.
Fordham University Internet Sourcebook: East Asian History
Click to view a selection of primary source documents from all eras of Chinese history translated into English.
Digital Collections for Chinese Studies (George Washington University)
Over 100 collections of digitized materials with collection locations mapped to an interactive map. You can search for institutions with collections by clicking on a location. There are also many ways to limit search criteria. Organized and maintained under the leadership of Yan He. To suggest a collection to be added, see this site.
The Memory Project (Duke University)
“The Memory Project collects oral histories from survivors of the Great Famine that devastated rural China between 1958 and 1961. Officially known in China as the “Three Years of Natural Disasters” or “The Difficult Three-Year Period,” the Great Famine caused the death of between 20 and 43 million people. More recently the project has also covered the Great Leap Forward of 1958-1960, the Land Reform and the Collectivization of 1949-1953, the Four Cleanups Movement in 1964, and the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976.”
An open-access archive free to use for anyone who registers an account. The archive contains thousands selected to document and analyze how the CCP dealt with the legacy of the Maoist past. It focuses on four different areas: 1) the CCP's standards, institutions, and processes of administrating historical justice; 2) regional variances in implementing these policies between center and periphery; 3) the impact of the reversal of verdicts on social stability and CCP rule; and 4) documenting the reversal of verdicts.
Exploring Republican China in the USC Digital Library: An Experimental Metadata Analysis
This exploratory study, funded by the FY2021 USC Libraries Research Grant, analyzes the metadata of over 1,500 items in various categories from digital collections related to Republican China (1911-1949) in the USC Digital Library. It uses data visualization, mapping, social network analysis, and other analytic tools to investigate their coverage and connections in terms of geographic locations, timeline, historical figures and events, themes, and possible social networks. The results of this study, particularly the visual mapping and analysis, will help researchers gain a deeper understanding of USC’s Republican China collections.
“Bill Einreinhofer China Archive
"The digital collection of Bill Einreinhofer China Archive, features nearly 1000 digital video, image, audio, and text files used by Einreinhofer to create a series of public television documentaries spanning modern China and Japan from 1910 to 2022. Bill Einreinhofer is a three-time Emmy Award winner and emeritus chair of the New York Film Academy's Broadcast Journalism department.”
Visualizing Cultures: Image Driven Scholarship was launched at MIT in 2002 to explore the potential of the Web for developing innovative image-driven scholarship and learning. The mission of Visualizing Cultures is to use new technology to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be). Topical units to date focus on Japan in the modern world and early-modern China.
China, America, and the Pacific (18th–20th Centuries). This database contains an extensive range of archival material connected to the trading and cultural relationships that emerged between China, America and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Manuscript sources, rare printed texts, visual images, objects and maps document this fascinating history. Maintained by Adam Matthews Digital.
Asia and the West: 19th Century Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange. 19th Century British Foreign Office and United States consular and diplomatic records from China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. These records reflect the day-to-day activities with the indigenous populations, the expansion of trade, and the exercise of extraterritorial rights and treaty provisions. Also included is a substantial selection of missionary correspondence and journals from China, Japan, Korea, and Siam (Bangkok). Maintained by Gale-Cengage.
Travel Writing, Spectacle, and World History brings together hundreds of accounts produced by women documenting their travels across the globe. Several accounts cover travel in Asia. The materials contained in this database range from the early 19th century to the late 20th century and include unique manuscripts, diaries, correspondence, guidebooks, postcards, sketches and photographs. From Adam Mathews Digital
Empire Online World Empires from 1492-1969. Includes a wealth of primary sources including manuscripts, rare printed materials, letter books, missionary papers, slave papers, travel writing, periodicals, diaries, photographs and more. Supplementing the primary sources are secondary resources such as essays, interactive maps, chronology and an image gallery. Materials in the collections spans five centuries, charting the story of the rise and fall of empires, gathered from a wide range of reputable institutions, with a core from the British Library. Maintained by Adam Matthew Digital.
[British] Foreign Office Files China (1919–1980). The six parts of this collection (listed below) make available all British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980. Maintained by Adam Matthews Digital.
The China Mission History Repository holds original materials and reproductions relevant mainly to the history of Roman Catholic missionary activities in China from the late-imperial era to the present.
The North China Herald Online Newspaper (1850–1940) is the prime printed source for the history of the foreign presence in China from around 1850 to 1940s. No other newspaper existed over such an extended period or covers the era with such depth and variety. Full-text searchable.
The Twenty-Four Dynastic Histories (Shi ji 史記 to Ming shi 明史)
The histories in this series are printed in two columns; the left column reproduces the original classical Chinese text, the right column contains the same text translated into Modern Chinese (baihua 白話). The side-by-side translation can help to speed up your reading of these historical works. Location: Chinese Stacks of the Asian Collection (HBLL Level 4), Call Number: DS 735. A2 E65 2004.
The People's Republic of China (1949–1979): A Documentary History
This five volume set contains English translations of many key documents from the founding of the PRC in 1949 through the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the death of Mao Zedong. These volumes are located in the Social Science Reference Stacks (Floor 1).
Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 2: 
Volume 2 brings together more than two-hundred key source texts from 1600 to the 20th Century.
China Reader: The Reform Era by 
Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection by 
Twentieth Century China: A History in Documents by 
The China Reader: Rising Power by 
British Travel Writing from China, 1798–1901 by 
The American Presidency Project is maintained by political science professors John Woolley and Gerhard Peters and hosted at UC Santa Barbara. This database provides access to numerous documents related to US-China relations. You can search for key terms and limit your search to a particular president's era of administration.
Digital version of US Congressional Serial Set contains all the Reports, Documents, and Journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives from 1817 to the present. These documents constitute a rich source of primary source material on all aspects of American history. A print version of the Serial Set would consist of over 12 million pages.
The National Bureau of Statistics of China website provides a trove of official economic and demographic data reported monthly, quarterly, and annually. It can also be viewed in Chinese.
China Data Online is a valuable data source for China studies. It includes (1) China Statistical Databases; and (2) China Census Databases; It provides easy access to the various statistical yearbooks published by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, comprehensive statistics, and Census data of economy and population at national, provincial, city, county, and even township levels.
China Vitae is a resource of biographical information on more than 5000 Chinese leaders in government, politics, the military, education, business, and the media. China Vitae also tracks the appearances and travel of approximately 500 leading Chinese officials. Searchable information is available on date and location of activity, officials in attendance, topics raised, and source of the data. CV also records official announcements of new appointments to senior Party and government positions. China Vitae is maintained and operated by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The China Journal (1995–present) The China Journal is a cutting-edge source of scholarship, information and analysis about China and Taiwan. TCJ has published informed and insightful commentary from China scholars worldwide and stimulated the scholarly debate on contemporary China for more than thirty years. Interdisciplinary in scope, TCJ provides deep coverage of important anthropological, sociological, and political science topics.
The China Quarterly (1960–present) The China Quarterly is the leading scholarly journal in its field, covering all aspects of contemporary China including Taiwan. Its interdisciplinary approach covers a range of subjects including anthropology/sociology, literature and the arts, business/economics, geography, history, international affairs, law, and politics. Edited to rigorous standards by scholars of the highest repute, the journal publishes high-quality, authoritative research, keeping readers up to date with events in China.
Journal of Asian Studies (1956–present) The Journal of Asian Studies (JAS) publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed empirical and multidisciplinary work on Asia, spanning the arts, history, literature, the social sciences, and cultural studies. Coverage includes South and Southeast Asia, China, Inner Asia, and Northeast Asia, JAS welcomes broad comparative and transnational studies as well as essays emanating from fine-grained historical, cultural, political, and literary research. The journal also publishes clusters of papers that present new and vibrant discussions on specific themes and issues.
Journal of Contemporary China (1992–preent) The Journal of Contemporary China is a peer-reviewed journal providing exclusive information about contemporary Chinese affairs for scholars, business people and government policy-makers. The journal's fields of interest include economics, political science, law, culture, literature, business, history, international relations, sociology and other social sciences and humanities.
Asian Affairs (London; 1970–present) covers the whole region of Asia—Central Asia, the Middle East, South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia. The journal generally consists of articles on specific countries, locales, or historical episodes, as well as contemporary affairs. The Journal favors articles of a practical and general character above those which are highly technical, or which concentrate on academic theory. A substantial section of each issue consists of book reviews of new publications.
Yale Journal of International Affairs (2005–present)
婦研從橫 "Forum in Women's and Gender Studies" (2016–present)
Late Qing and Imperial Era Newspapers Open Source repository maintained by the Center for Research Libraries and East View Information Services. Download the Factsheet for a list of titles and holdings.
ProQuest Global Newsstream provides one of the largest collections of full-text news resources from the US, Canada, Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Australia covering content from 1980 to the present. You can set a date range to get the most recent news. You can also limit your search to specific newspapers by title.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers provides full-text searchable content ranges from 1849 to 2005. The newspapers indexed in this database include: the New York Times and Wall Street Journal as well as the Atlanta Constitution, Austin American Statesman, Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Hartford Courant, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Toronto Star.
Free Access to the current issue of the New York Times is available to BYU students and faculty. You will need to create a free account using your @byu.edu email address. To access news about China, type "China" In the search box of the NYT homepage.
Influential Newspapers Current Issues and Archives
Historical Newspaper for Expats in China (1850–1940)
The North China Herald Online Newspaper (1850–1940) is the prime printed source for the history of the foreign presence in China from around 1850 to 1940s. No other newspaper existed over such an extended period or covers the era with such depth and variety. Full-text searchable.
List of Scholars Actively Researching Modern Chinese History
BYU Faculty:
Diana Duan, BYU, Dept. of History
Eric Hyer, Brigham Young University, Political Science
Kirk Larsen, BYU, Dept. of History
Faculty at Other Universities:
Carol A. Benedict, Georgetown Univ., Walsh School of Foreign Service; History
Denise Y. Ho, Yale University, History
William Kirby, Harvard University, Director of the Fairbank Center for China Studies
Daniel Koss, Harvard University, EALC
Fabio Lanza, University of Arizona, History
Tom Mullaney, Stanford University, History
Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University, Political Science & Weatherhead East Asia Institute
Michael Szonyi, Harvard University, EALC, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, University of California, Irvine, History
Sydney D. Gamble Photography Collection, Duke University Sidney D. Gamble (1890-1968), sociologist, renowned China scholar, and avid amateur photographer, began taking pictures in China during his first trip to the country with his family in 1908. He returned three more times between 1917 to 1932 and continued photographing the daily life of Chinese citizens. He traveled throughout the country to collect data for social-economic surveys and to photograph urban and rural life, public events, architecture, religious statuary, and the countryside. Gamble used a few of the photographs from his extensive collection in his scholarly publications and in slide lectures, the majority of images were never published or exhibited during his lifetime.
Historical Photographs of China is an open-access resource for more than 8,000 digitized photographs taken in China between 1850 and 1950. Users may search or browse across the collections and conduct Boolean searches, refining results by date, viewing geo-tagged map results, and exploring connections between results. Users may download images of interest and save them to "My Workbench."
Post Cultural Revolution Posters • University of California San Diego Library. Seventy-seven propaganda posters created by various Chinese agencies, 1968-1989.
Chinese Propaganda Posters. This database provides access to hundreds of images portraying events and personalities from the history of the Chinese Communist Party. Click on “Themes” to view posters for such topics as “The Long March,” “The Sino-Japanese War,” “The Great Leap Forward,” “The Cultural Revolution,” Mao Zedong and other Communist Party leaders, "Models and Martyrs," "Working Women," "Villains," etc.
History of Contemporary Chinese Art 1949 to the Present (2020) by Zhou Yan. eBook.
Includes the following chapters:
ProQuest's Alexander Street is the world’s leading provider of academic streaming media to libraries. They have partnered with top video producers around the world to deliver more than 60,000 video titles across all disciplines. They are particularly strong in the fields of anthropology, history, diversity studies, theatre, film, music, dance, news, current affairs, and the social sciences. For video related to Asian Studies, click Here.
FRONTLINE produces works of investigative journalism that both question and explain complicated and controversial aspects of our modern world. Frontline has been one of American television’s top long-form news and current affairs series since 1983. They have won every major journalism and broadcasting award, including 91 Emmy Awards and 22 Peabody Awards. You can watch more than 200 documentaries online, for free, any time.
Kanopy partners with public libraries and universities to stream thoughtful entertainment to your preferred device with no fees and no commercials. Click the logo above and log in with your BYU NetID to enjoy Kanopy's diverse catalog with new titles added every month. You can search for films on Asian topics and in Asian languages.
An extensive collection of streamable documentary video. Maintained by Infobase.
A film produced and directed by Carma Hinton, Geremie R. Barmé, and Richard Gordon about the Cultural Revolution
The film Morning Sun attempts in the space of a two-hour documentary film to create an inner history of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (c.1964-1976). It provides a multi-perspective view of a tumultuous period as seen through the eyes—and reflected in the hearts and minds—of members of the high-school generation that was born around the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and that came of age in the 1960s. Others join them in creating in the film’s conversation about the period and the psycho-emotional topography of high-Maoist China, as well as the enduring legacy of that period.
The mission of the History News Network (HNN) is to help put current events into historical perspective. Each week HNN features up to a dozen fresh op eds by prominent historians. Our archives, extending over the past decade, include thousands of well-researched pieces. HNN aims to expose politicians who misrepresent history, to point out bogus analogies, to deflate beguiling myths, to put events in context, and to remind us all of the complexity of history.
A multi-volume work written by respected experts covering Chinese history from the stone age through the era of Mao Zedong. The library has hard copies of all volumes (Call Numbers: DS 735. C3145) and many digital copies—links to the eBook versions are provided below. Upon selecting the desired eBook, choose the chapter you want and then click the "Save PDF" icon to view or download.
Archival Resources of Republican China in North America by 
Chinese History: A New Manual, 2 Vols. by Counsel of Foreign Relations: Timeline of U.S. Relations with China (1949–2020)
Since 1949, U.S.-China relations have evolved from tense standoffs to a complex mix of intensifying diplomacy, growing international rivalry, and increasingly intertwined economies.
A Companion to Chinese History (2016). eBook.
A collection of essays offering a comprehensive overview of the latest intellectual developments in the study of China's history from the ancient past up until the present day. Covers the major trends in the study of Chinese history from antiquity to the present day Considers the latest scholarship of historians working in China and around the world Explores a variety of long-range questions and themes which serves to bridge the conventional divide between China's traditional and modern eras Addresses China's connections with other nations and regions.
Helen was born in Cedar City, Utah and educated in Salt Lake City. She later travelled to China during the 1930s becoming involved in student movements and supporting the establishment of industrial cooperative ventures. She met several of the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, including Mao Zedong. She wrote widely on her experiences and took many photographs; her manuscripts, letters, and photos are housed in BYU's Special Collections.
L. Tom Perry Special Collections Call Number: MSS 2219 On-site Use Only: Ask at Special Collections Help Desk (1130 HBLL).
Link 1: Collection Intro and Finding Aid
Link 2: Detailed Register of Many Individual Items Found in the Collection
Books By Helen Foster Snow
(a.k.a. Nym Wales)
China Builds for Democracy (1942)
The Chinese Communists: Sketches and Autobiographies (1952; rpt. 1972)
Alexander Street Press
