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Hoover’s many Chinese collections document political, economic, and social developments during the revolution of 1911, the warlord period, the civil war, and the post-1949 period. Holdings on pre-1949 Republican China, including Nationalist government documents and Chinese Communist Party materials, are particularly robust. Also available are accounts of non-Chinese public servants, military officers, engineers, journalists, and scholars who shaped or witnessed developments in China.
Chinese military and political leader and former head of state of the Republic of China
Materials regarding Homer Lea, military adviser to Sun Yat-sen and to the revolutionary movement in China
US missionary in China, 1909–15 and 1932–33
Financier and official in the Chinese Nationalist government
Businessman and statesman in the Chinese Nationalist government
Banker and official in the Chinese Nationalist government
Materials relating to Chinese communist activity in the Jiangxi Soviet Republic, 1931–37
Former premier of the Republic of China
US journalist who reported from Yan’an, China, during the 1930s
Commanding officer of the American Volunteer Group in the Chinese Air Force’s “Flying Tigers”
US Army general in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II
US Army commander in the China and Southeast Asia theaters during World War II
US historian, journalist, and author, The Rape of Nanking
Chinese dissident; prisoner, 1960–68
Newspaper issues, pamphlets, broadsides, and flyers issued by Red Guards
Hsiao-ting Lin is a research fellow and curator of the Modern China and Taiwan collection at the Hoover Institution, for which he collects material on China and Taiwan, as well as China-related materials in other East Asian countries. He holds a BA in political science ...
"China's Wartime History and Contemporary East Asia"
Rana Mitter, Professor of History and Politics of Modern China, Oxford University
Century of Change: China 1911-2011
(April 2011-February 2012)
This exhibit commemorated the hundredth anniversary of, and century since, the Chinese revolution of 1911.
"The Modern China Archives and Special Collections"
by Ramon Myers and Tai-chun Kuo
Most of the items described in these guides are now available at the East Asia Library at Stanford University or Stanford Auxiliary Libraries (SAL 1 & 2). Please check Stanford's online libraries catalog for exact locations.
Berton, Peter, and Eugene Wu. Contemporary China: a Research Guide. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1967.
Chan, Ming K. Historiography of the Chinese Labor Movements, 1895–1949: A Critical Survey and Bibliography of Selected Chinese Source Materials at the Hoover Institution. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1981.
I-mu. Unofficial Documents of the Democracy Movement in Communist China, 1978–1981: Chung-kuo Min Chu Yun Tung Tzu Liao: A Checklist of Chinese Materials in the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Stanford, Calif.: East Asian Collection, Hoover Institution, 1986.
Israel, John. The Chinese Student Movement, 1927–1937: A Bibliographical Essay Based on the Resources of the Hoover Institution. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University, 1959.
Kiyohara, Michiko. China Watching by the Japanese: Reports and Investigations from the First Sino-Japanese War to the Unification of China Under the Communist Party: A Checklist of Holdings In the East Asian Collection, Hoover Institution. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1987.
Mote, Frederick W. Japanese-sponsored Governments in China, 1937–1945: An Annotated Bibliography Compiled from Materials in the Chinese Collection of the Hoover Library. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1954.
Widor, Claude. The Samizdat Press in China's Provinces, 1979–1981: An Annotated Guide. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1987.
Wu, Eugene. Leaders of Twentieth-century China: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Chinese Biographical Works in the Hoover Library. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1956.
Wu, Tien-wei. The Kiangsi Soviet Republic, 1931–1934: A Selected and Annotated Bibliography of the Chen Cheng Collection. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University, 1981.
Xue, Jundu. The Chinese Communist Movement, 1921–1937: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Materials in the Chinese Collection of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Palo Alto: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University, 1960.
The Hoover Institution Archives has recently acquired the papers of Michel Oksenberg (1938–2001), a renowned political scientist and China expert who played a crucial role in the negotiations that led to the normalization of US-China relations in early 1979.
Hoover Library & Archives recently acquired the personal papers of Tang Zhenchang (1922–2002), a celebrated intellectual whose areas of interest encompassed history, journalism, cinema, screenwriting, and literature. Born in Chengdu, in the Sichuan Province of China, Tang graduated from Yenching University, China’s preeminent Christian university in the modern era.
The Hoover Institution Library & Archives is pleased to announce that the papers of prominent Chinese historian and politician Li Rui are now open for research. Consisting of correspondence, diaries, meeting minutes...
The Hoover Library & Archives hosted a special event on April 22, 2019, to discuss the life and legacy of Li Rui, an old-guard Communist who became a revisionist historian and standard-bearer for liberal values in China.
China, throughout the 20th century, experienced uncertainty and revolution that resulted in radical changes in government. During this time, China also experienced frequent natural disasters (floods and earthquakes) and famines. The effect of these disasters on China’s large population was devastating; people perished, lost their crops, had their houses destroyed, and fled from their homes.
The relationship between family and state was central to China’s empire-to-nation transformation. My book project, State Is Family, explores this fundamental relationship with a specific focus on the legalized cult of filiality and its modern appropriation.
Glenn Tiffert, a Visiting Fellow, is among a new breed of historians who are marshalling digital technologies and the tools of data science to probe the past. A specialist on twentieth-century China, he received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and taught at the University of Michigan...
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 1937 marked the beginning of the second Sino-Japanese War that would last for the next eight years. For the four and half years before Pearl Harbor, Nationalist China under Chiang Kai-shek fought a lone and bitter war with the Japanese.
This month Hoover Library & Archives congratulates Dr. Hsiao-ting Lin, Curator for Modern China, whose book Accidental State: Chiang Kai-shek, the United States, and the Making of Taiwan (Harvard University Press, 2016) received the 2017 Kingstone Award for Most Influential Book of the Year in Taiwan.
