A new home for independent Chinese thinkers—and a new publication, “Mining the Chinese Archives.”
By Ian Johnson
中国民间档案馆 China Unofficial Archives is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Fifteen months ago, on December 11, 2023, we launched the China Unofficial Archives as a non-profit dedicated to making available the works of independent Chinese thinkers: their books, magazines, articles, and documentary films. It has since grown to be the most comprehensive collection of Chinese books, magazines, and films available online to the general public.
Today, we are happy to announce a significant upgrade to the Archives with an array of new features, including better graphic interface, a comprehensive database of Chinese independent thinkers, mapping functions, and full-text searches—more on these features below.
First, let me introduce what you are now reading: a weekly newsletter in which we will introduce key books, films, artwork, as well as writers and directors—people we call “creators”—who have been publishing books and making films over the 75-year history of the People’s Republic of China.
We’ll have the occasional housekeeping email like this one, but most newsletters will be under the rubric of “Mining the Archives.” With a staff of half a dozen writers from inside and outside the People’s Republic, we’ll shine a spotlight in our archive to feature people—from last year to last century—who speak to today’s issues.
Image copyright: Sim Chi Yin
We will write about creators who have written books or made films about the early years of CCP rule, but our focus is firmly in the present; we aim to look at the structural problems that are relevant today. These unfortunately timeless issues include the problems of one-person rule, the lack of freedom of speech, the second-class treatment of women and ethnic minority groups, and, more broadly, the forced assimilation of peripheral regions, not only Tibet and Xinjiang, but also Hong Kong. And of course, we’ll look at China’s countryside, where farmers have never been able to own their most valuable asset: their land.
All of these issues have been challenges since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949 and have been discussed and analyzed by Chinese people inside China from the very start. Unfortunately, few of them are known to people of our era (both Chinese and non-Chinese). This means that when analyzing China under Xi Jinping we tend to think that the pressing problems of today only started a few years ago. It can help us to understand what people of earlier years thought about these challenges.
Learning about earlier generations of independent thinkers isn’t just helpful in framing the issues of today; it is empowering and inspiring to see the thoughts, actions, and lives of these people, from the brave pioneers of the Mao era, such as Yu Luoke and Lin Zhao, to courageous citizens of recent years, such as Peng Lifa, whose cri de coeur against China’s political system inspired the White Paper Movement in late 2022.
Who will write these articles? We’ll have a revolving cast of writers, some inside and some outside China. I’ll be one of them, but only once in a while. We want a diverse group of writers, some ethnically Chinese, others from minority groups, some from the heart of the country and others from the peripheries, or the diaspora.
In the coming weeks, if you choose to stay subscribed, you can hear their voices as they delve into the archives to help us understand some of today’s social issues. Our newsletter aims to feature a wide array of works of independent thought and the people behind these ideas. Even if you are not following China closely, you should know who some of these people are because they are some of the most important voices of conscience in the 20th and 21st centuries.
With today’s upgrade, we have a series of new features, such as:
· A new database of creators. Before this upgrade, the archive had one database: of publications and films. You could search that database by theme, era, format, or creator. Now, we have added a unique, bilingual database of independent Chinese writers and filmmakers. Because we intend to expand this to include people who use art and music to express their independent thought, we simply call them “creators.” We have more than one hundred creator bios and are adding more regularly. To our knowledge, this is the most extensive database of independent Chinese thinkers. We hope it serves as a corrective to the mistaken idea that opposition to one-party rule is limited to a handful of dissidents in big Chinese cities. This database introduces to us a broad array of people, including those who are “inside the system” (tizhinei). It should give pause to simplistic visions of China as a place where critical thinking has been silenced. That has never been the case and still is not.
Image copyright: Sim Chi Yin
· Full-text searches of books and magazines. Before this upgrade, searches were only by tags, so only when a book or movie was tagged “Cultural Revolution” could it show up in a search. Now, you can choose “full text” and search an entire book. This is especially helpful for users searching for specific names, places, or concepts. Going forward, it will also allow users to conduct textual analysis of works, such as figuring out when certain terms (for example “feminism” or “rule of law”) became widespread.
· Mapping. As you can see on the homepage and from the drop-down menu, we now have a mapping function. We have been going through the hundreds of items in our archive and adding tags for locations, such as where a person was born and died, or where a campaign originated. The maps themselves are fun—you can zoom into a part of the country (or even the world; some tagged locations are outside China) and see what happened there. We’re still building this function out but already have several hundred locations tagged.
· Pages for Themes and Eras. The archive tags items by themes and eras, so in the past you could search by a theme (for example “rule of law”) but could not click on that theme and arrive at a new page that holds all these items. Now you can, which makes it easier to look up similar works. In the future, we will also provide definitions for these themes and eras, turning these pages into reference pages for the history of the People’s Republic.
· YouTube Channel. Before this upgrade, we linked to other channels that posted films on YouTube. Predictably, this has proven to be unreliable, as videos hosted by others could be removed at any time. Now, we will link videos in the Archives to our own channel, which you can access here. Currently we just have 13 movies up but have another 150 to add. Stay tuned!
· Social media. In the past, we had social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram but did not use them much. Our initial launch was always conceived of as a soft launch that would allow us to gather feedback and improve weak areas. Now that we have done so, we are ready to promote the site on these three platforms, as well as Bluesky, and Chinese social media. We will offer “on this day” features, and promote this newsletter as well as new additions to the archive, such as our growing YouTube offering. If this interests you, please click here for our social media accounts on YouTube, Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky.
In the future, we still have a lot of work to do, including:
Adding more information on regions further from the center, such as Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang.
Increasing the number of creators and improving the quality of each biography.
Increasing the number of geographical tags.
Improving our full-text search function so that hits don’t just show the publication but also an excerpt of the text with the searched-for item.
Finally, I’d like to ask you, dear reader, for constructive suggestions. Please feel free to send me an email with your views at idj@minjian-danganguan.org.
Thanks,
Ian Johnson
中国民间档案馆 China Unofficial Archives is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
