HONG KONG: China scholarship centre's big ambitions

04 July 2010

A university library in Hong Kong is aiming to open up new fields of research on China by building the world's most comprehensive repository of statistical information on the country, better than anything available on the mainland, writes Mary Hennock for The Chronicle of Higher Education. The ambition is huge: to put details about life in China dating back to 1949 into a digital format that permits swift comparisons and reaches down to the country's smallest towns and villages.

The project will "give scholars a new horizon to look at China's evolution," says Xiao Jin, assistant director of the Universities Service Centre for China Studies, based at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Founded in 1963, the library and research center has served as a locus for scholarship on mainland China for decades. Since China opened up in the 1980s, the centre has been buying hard-to-find county gazettes. The collection has proved to be a valuable resource to scholars.
Full report on The Chronicle of Higher Education site

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