Editors' Introduction

Abstract

The decade between 1979 and 1989 was a time of extraordinary openness in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and allowed unparalleled access to scholars and institutions. The flood of materials that resulted includes much information on the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For scholars interested in the CCP and modern Chinese history and politics, the newly available materials on party history are a blessing. Unlike scholars in the 1960s and 1970s, current researchers are not reduced to savoring documentary scraps and to divining the subtexts of propaganda articles in People's Daily and Red Flag. Today's researcher on party history is confronted with a different problem: what to do with the confusing array of views and sources that have surfaced in old and new publications that have come pouring out of China since the late 1970s. How should one make use of this embarrassment of his-toriographical riches? To date, there have been only piecemeal assessments of major new sources by scholars outside China. There are no annotated guides in English to primary documents, recent scholarly studies, and current research trends for the past two decades to parallel Teng and Biggerstaff s or Wilkinson's excellent guides to traditional historiography, Fairbank and Liu's or Berton and Wu's bibliographic guides to modern history, or Feuerwerker and Cheng's old but still useful annotated guide, Chinese Communist Studies of Modem Chinese History (1961).1 This is not surprising, as scholars turn first to detailed studies using the newly available sources—for which they hope to be rewarded with plaudits for originality and financial security. After working with the sources, historians outside China may be expected to turn to a systematic introduction of these for students. Although a humble beginning in this direction has been made by one of the present editors,2 we must rely for the time being on our Chinese colleagues who, naturally, are far more conversant than we are with these newly available materials and current research trends in China on party history.