The Chinese Communist Party and International Affairs: A Field Report on New Historical Sources and Old Research Problems

Abstract

Conditions for research on the foreign relations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have changed dramatically over the past decade in ways that deserve underscoring as well as applauding. Those changes now make possible a more wide-ranging research strategy one that includes inner-Party documents, memoirs from abroad range of prominent Party personalities, and articles and books based on privileged access to archives and interviews with individual leaders. These kinds of materials can today be set alongside those long-time staples of research, the contemporary Party press and the selected works of Party leaders.Thus armed with greater evidence than ever before, the students of the CCP can now advance towards a broader and deeper understanding of the Party's foreign relations. Certainly, there is nothing equivalent in fullness or ease of access to the U.S. Department of State's documentary series, and the likelihood of being able to walk into the Central Party Archives in Beijing to ask for documents 30 years old or even older as one can do at the Public Records Office in London is still but a hopeful glimmer in the scholar's eye. But compared to the extremely limited opportunities of the past, a new era is here. This survey is intended to draw attention to new sources and old problems in the study of the CCP's international relations, and to serve as a guide for those interested in moving into that field of research.This report is based on impressions and materials collected in China during the spring and summer of 1989.