Chinese Studies

The collection contains more than 450 comic books (lianhuanhua 连环画), mostly published from the 1950s to the 1970s. Its contents range from Chinese literary classics, fiction, nonfiction, translated literature, fairy tales, myths, folklore, and biography, etc. After 1949, lianhuanhua was further developed as a revolutionary art form and became one of the popular ways of disseminating Communist ideology, social practices, and political campaigns.

This collection includes around two hundred photographs that had once belonged to Lin Baisheng, a prominent newspaper editor in Republican China, who served as the Minister of Publicity (宣傳部長) for the Wang Jingwei 'collaborationist' regime (or "RNG") in Japanese-occupied China from 1940 to 1945. These photos document some of Wang and Lin's official activities during the period of the RNG (1940-1945).

This unique collection includes archival materials documenting the activities of ordinary Chinese people and working units of low-level PRC government and institutions in various locations and jurisdictions during the Mao era (1949-1976). This growing archive contains various documents such as internal reports, working procedures and plans, business recordings, speeches by party leaders, thought reports, and the handwritten confessions of ordinary Chinese workers and low-ranking cadres during a wide array of historical events and political campaigns in contemporary China.