UofL Libraries: Asian Studies: China

China

Background

China Biographical Database Project (CBDB)

Biographical information about approximately 521,442 individuals as of August 2022, primarily from the 7th through 19th centuries.

Encyclopedia Britannica - China

Information on the land, people, economy, administration and social conditions, cultural life, and history.

The World Factbook - China

Basic intelligence on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, environment, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues.

BBC Country Profiles - China

An instant guide to the history, politics, and economic background of countries and territories.

China: A Country Study

Offers a comprehensive description and analysis of the country or region's historical setting, geography, society, economy, political system, and foreign policy.

UofL Government Resource Guide - China

Our Government Resources guide provides an extensive list of articles related to politics, culture, and society

Secondary Sources

Use these databases to find articles and/or essays in scholarly journals and books.

Statistics

UofL Databases

Statista

Open Access

The National Bureau of Statistics China

As an agency directly under the State Council, the National Bureau of Statistics is in charge of statistics and economic accounting in China.

Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS)

The Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) launched in 2003, is the earliest national representative continuous survey project run by academic institution in China mainland. Individual Registration needed to access data starting from 2003.

Primary Sources

These databases and websites provide access to digital archival materials such as manuscripts, letters, photographs, moving image and sound materials, artwork, books, diaries, and other artifacts. You can also visit our main pages for AsiaandEast Asia to find additional databases and resources covering broader regions.

UofL Databases

China, America and the Pacific
Manuscripts, rare texts, visual images, objects, and maps documenting the trade and cultural relationships of China, America, and the Pacific region between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries.
China: Culture and Society
Spanning three centuries (c1750-1929), this resource makes available for the first time extremely rare pamphlets from Cornell University Library’s Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia.
China: Trade, Politics and Culture 1793-1980
With documents encompassing events from the earliest English embassy to the birth and early years of the People’s Republic, this resource collects sources from nine archives to give an incredible insight into the changes in China during this period.
Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1980
Includes all British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980.

Open Access

Historic Newspapers - China Families

This site offers a growing list of newspapers, periodicals, and related publications, published in China (mostly) and freely accessible online1850s and 1940s. (Chinese, Japanese and English language)

Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers

This collection provides insight on Chinese life, culture, and politics throughout the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, the years of the provisional government and civil war, and the birth of the People’s Republic. The press of more than twenty cities is represented, spanning the Chinese mainland and the entire half-century.

The Chinese Foreign Policy Database - Wilson Center Digital Archive

Curating 1000s of documents from Chinese and international archives, this website offers insights into China’s foreign policy since 1949 and its relationship to ideology, revolution, the economy, and traditional Chinese culture.

Ming Qing Women's Writings

This digital archive offers free access to digitized collections of writings by women in late imperial China (1368-1911).

Chinese Text Project

The Chinese Text Project is an online open-access digital library that makes pre-modern Chinese texts available to readers and researchers all around the world. The site attempts to make use of the digital medium to explore new ways of interacting with these texts that are not possible in print. With over thirty thousand titles and more than five billion characters, the Chinese Text Project is also the largest database of pre-modern Chinese texts in existence.

Chinese Buddhist Electronic Texts 中華電子佛典

Cross reference of over 4300 Buddhist texts to different prints and versions of the Chinese Buddhist canon.

Chinese Political Posters

Contains political poster images from the 1920's on. Each record contains author information and English translations.

Rare & Special eZone - 稀有和特殊eZone

Collections include antique maps of China, travelogs of China by westerners from the 16th to 19th centuries, rare books in the history of science, by revolutionary figures, and rare thread-bound books published from the Qing Dynasty to the early 20th Century.

Chinese Pamphlets

Mass education materials published in Hong Kong and in Mainland China, particularly Shanghai, in the years 1947-1954. These cartoon books, pamphlets, postcards and magazines, on topics such as foreign threats to Chinese security, Chinese relations with the Soviet Union, industrial and agricultural production, and marriage reform, were produced by both Kuomintang (Nationalist) and Gongchantang (Communist) supporters.

Chinese Rare Book Digital Collection

The Chinese Rare Book Digital Collection draws from the 5,300 titles of Chinese rare books housed at the Asian Division of the Library of Congress. The online presentation includes nearly 2,000 digitized rare titles.

Tibetan Oral History Archive Project

The Tibetan Oral History and Archive Project (TOHAP) is a digital online web archive of oral history interviews in Tibetan and Chinese with accompanying written transcripts (in English) that documents the social and political history of modern Tibet. The interview tapes can be listened to simultaneous with reading the transcripts. The translations were made in a literal style to retain a flavor of the original Tibetan. The TOHAP collection includes a large corpus of interviews from common folks and Drepung monastery monks speaking about their lives, and Tibetan and Chinese officials speaking about modern Tibetan history.