ISBN: (13) 978-1-85207-930-7
Extent: 11 volumes, 6,970 pages
Editor: R.L. Jarman
Author:N/A
ISBN: (10) 1-85207-930-4
Published: 2001
Paper: Printed on acid free paper
Binding: Library bindings
See sample pages: not available
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RESUMÉ
China Political Reports 1911-1960 is a collection of reports which has been established as an integrated series by Robert L. Jarman, F.R.G.S. The documents are listed in detail at the front of each volume and source references given for the benefit of scholars.
The collection begins with the 1911 annual report and ends with the annual report for 1960. Many different kinds of report come and go but the annuals are the backbone of the collection. This period covers the history of the rise of Communism in China and its effects over more than half a century. Although the period covers the First and Second World Wars the impact of these world events is almost matched for the Chinese by their internal struggles. After the declaration of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese diplomacy took a more international turn but by then the international arena had become paralysed by the effects of the cold war and the prevailing beliefs of the Great Powers were anti-Communist in nature thereby continuing the isolation of China.
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
This collection of political reports begins with the 1911 annual report. To summarise this report would be to say it describes the fall of the Manchu Dynasty, but any attempt to do so reveals the nature of all these reports on China. The vastness of the land area of China, the many different peoples and the different political character of the many provinces mean a level of detail that defies any attempt at simplification. Furthermore, China shares external boundaries with 14 countries to the north, west and south and has 14000 kilometres of coastline to the east.
The reports follow the dynastic ambitions of Yuan Shikai, former Commander-in-Chief of the imperial army; the rise of republicanism in China and the revolution itself; the developing struggle between Kuo Min-tang and Communists; the leadership of Dr Sun Yat Sen and later Chiang Kai-Shek, their ideological and physical battles with the Communists and the emergence of Zhou Enlai and Mao Tse Tung.
They describe the effects of the ‘Long March’ and the support of, and finally severance from, the Soviet Communist Party; the Japanese invasion and retaliation towards Chinese guerrilla resistance and its galvanising effect upon a previously apolitical peasantry; the Chinese civil war which saw the Kuo Min-tang, backed by the USA, retreat to Taiwan but continue to claim to be the legitimate government of China; and the installation of the new government of China, declared on 1 October 1949, under ‘Chairman’ Mao Tse Tung, head of the Communist Party since 1935. After the declaration of the People’s Republic of China, internal politics have a less dramatic feel to them but foreign policy issues increase in importance. The war with Korea and the wider implications it had for relations with the Soviet Union and the United States of America; and relations with the bordering states of India and Tibet, in particular, feature largely in the correspondence. This collection of reports ends in 1960 with the effects of the ‘Great Leap’ forward of 1958 just beginning to be felt; the first suggestions of dissent within the leadership of the Communist Party; and the process of the elevation of Chairman Mao to cult status well under way.
DOCUMENTARY IMPORTANCE
This collection draws together the periodic political reports sent by British Officials based in China back to the British Foreign Office. Some of these reports were destined for official publication and are now located either in the Official Publications rooms of the British Museum or Cambridge University Library. Other reports were intended to be confidential and were seen only by the Foreign Secretary and permanent officials in the British Foreign Office. Such reports are generally released, after 30 years, into the public domain via the Public Record Office. Still further reports are retained by the Government indefinitely due to their perceived sensitivity.
The most important series of reports is the Annual Reports series, initiated by Sir Edward Grey in a memorandum of 6 April 1906 sent to British representatives in 46 countries. He suggested that the report should ´deal fully with events and matters of interest concerning that country which have occurred during the preceding twelve months, and should explain their bearing on its position and policy´; he also suggested topics that should be covered such as foreign relations, naval policy, the machinery of government, finance, education, and the press and its influence on public opinion.
Although the standard series of annual reports begins in 1906 we have chosen to begin this collection in 1911 as a particularly important year for China with the fall of the Manchu Dynasty. Therefore the annual reports run for 1911, 1912 and 1913 and then the Foreign Office decided to cease publication for the duration of the First World War. There are no reports for 1914 to 1918 and the series begins again in 1919. The annual reports run through to 1960 with only two exceptions: no reports can be found for either 1945 or 1949. The decision was made to carry on reporting during the Second World War, but to limit the report to a review of the year and to expand it again in peacetime. The reviews indeed continued throughout the war but remained thereafter as a review.
More frequent summaries of events were often produced in addition to annual reports and the first of these other series for China is the Quarterly Consular Summaries beginning in 1919. These were produced by the British Legation, Peking and were a summary of the intelligence reports received in Peking from all the British Consular Officers in China for each quarter. They continue more or less regularly until 30 June 1929. A memorandum dated 20 September 1929 from Sir M. Lampson at the Foreign Office notes that there is no need to continue with quarterly summaries when the actual reports are also being received in the Foreign Office.
From 1920 onwards a series of periodic despatches was forwarded to the Foreign Office to support the annual reports and quarterly summaries. These periodic reports were produced on a monthly basis until 1937 when a series called Monthly Reviews took over. The monthly reviews ran until the end of February 1949 and were themselves supported by a series of weekly news summaries from 1946 to September 1949.
By 1950 all these different periodic reports had ceased except the annual review. A new series called Peking Summaries of Events took over, produced on a tri-weekly basis, and was run in conjunction with a series of press and propaganda summaries until 1964 when they were replaced by the Weekly Peking Press Themes. In parallel, the Peking Monthly Observations start in 1961 and continue until August 1964. In 1954 the British Legation, Shanghai began a series of [Shanghai] summaries of events, press and propaganda. With its position in such a large port and its distance from Beijing, the reports arising from Shanghai have quite a different perspective from those centred in Beijing. These Shanghai Summaries continue through until the end of 1963 to be replaced by Shanghai Observations in April 1964. In January 1966 Peking Press Summaries appear and run to February 1967. Correspondingly, Shanghai Press Summaries begin in February 1966 but come to and end in July 1966.
There are two further types of report: personality reports and occasional despatches. The personality reports run from 1933 to 1949. They are a catalogue of the leading personalities in China during those years and are an extraordinary record of the political leaders, main party activists, diplomats, and industrialists of the time. The occasional despatches are not properly a series at all but are included because of the value of the information or political comment contained in them. Such reports as: ´Political Survey of Republican China, 1911-1926´ provide an invaluable background to the main reports series.
At the beginning of each volume there is a detailed contents listing and it is hoped that combined with this brief introduction to the documents the reader may easily find a route into the information contained within the collection.
From the Editor’s Introduction
ARRANGEMENT OF VOLUMES
Volume 1: 1911-1921
Volume 2: 1922-1923
Volume 3: 1924-1927
Volume 4: 1928-1932
Volume 5: 1933-1936
Volume 6: 1937-1941
Volume 7: 1942-1945
Volume 8: 1946-1948
Volume 9: 1949-1954
Volume 10: 1955-1957
Volume 11: 1958-1960
Within the volumes all the documents are arranged in strictly chronological order apart from one or two occasional reports which span a number of years. These are placed in the final year to which they refer.
Table of contents for China political reports 1911-1960 / edited by Robert L. Jarman.
Bibliographic record and links to related information available from the Library of Congress catalog
Note: Electronic data is machine generated. May be incomplete or contain other coding.
1911 Annual Report 1 Sir J Jordan, Peking, to Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Office, March 27,1912, Annual Report of events in China for the year 1911. [FO 405/229] 1912 Annual Report 63 Sir J Jordan, Peking, to Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Office, February 21, 1913, Annual Report of Events in China for the year 1912. [FO 405/229] 1913 Annual Report 109 Sir J Jordan, Peking, to Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Office, January 23, 1914, Annual Report of Events in China for the year 1913. [FO 405/229] 1919 Quarterly Consular Summaries 167 Sir J Jordan, British Legation, Peking to Foreign Office, June 11, 1919, summary of the intelligence reports for the quarter ending March 31st, 1919, [pages mis-numbered, nothing missing] [FO 371/3701] Sir J Jordan, British Legation, Peking to Foreign Office, September 195 18, 1919, summary for the quarter ending June 30th, 1919 Sir J Jordan, British Legation, Peking to Foreign Office, March 16, 219 1920, summary for the quarter ending September 30th, 1919 [pages mis-numbered, nothing missing] Sir J Jordan, British Legation, Peking to Foreign Office, April 22, 245 1920, summary for the quarter ending December 31st, 1919 [FO 371/5338] Annual Report 263 Sir J Jordan, Peking, to Sir Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, January 20, 1920, Annual Report of Events in China for the year 1919, with sketch map [FO 405/229] 1920 Quarterly Consular Summaries 313 British Legation, Peking to Foreign Office, June 7, 1920, summary of the intelligence reports for the quarter ending March 31st, 1920 Mr Clive, British Legation, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, 331 October 11, 1920, enclosing the summary for the quarter ending June 30th 1920 Sir B Alston, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, February 5, 339 1921 enclosing the summary for the quarter ending September 30, 1920 [FO 371/5338] British Legation, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, May 3, 1921 345 enclosing the summary for the quarter ending December 31, 1920 [FO 371/6634] Periodic Despatches 395 Mr Lampson, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, March 25, 1920 [FO 371/5338] Sir B Alston, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, May 25, 1920 [FO 371/5339] Sir B Alston, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, June 25, 1920 Mr Clive, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, July 11, 1920, with one enclosure: Doyen of the Diplomatic Body to Mr Tcheng Loh, Peking, July 8, 1920 [in French] Mr Clive, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, July 26, 1920, with two enclosures: extract from the Peking Daily News, July 19, 1920 entitled 'General Tuan Ch'i-jui's Manifesto against Tsao Kun and Wu Pei-Fu'; Military Governor of Chihli to the Doyen of the Diplomatic Body, Peking, Paotingfu July 17, 1920 Mr Clive, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, August 16, 1920, with one enclosure: Wai-chiao Pu to the Doyen of the Diplomatic Body, Peking, August 7, 1920 Mr Clive, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, September 13, 1920, with one enclosure: large extract from the Peking Leader of August 28, 1920 Mr Clive, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, September 20, 1920 [FO 371/ 5339] Mr Hubbard, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, November 3, 1920 Sir B Alston, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, January 24, 1921 [FO 371/6614] Annual Report 429 Sir B Alston, Peking, to Sir Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, February 4, 1921, Annual Report of events in China for the year 1920 [FO 371/6651] 1921 Monthly Telegraphic Intelligence Reports 457 Sir B Alston, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, February 2, 1921 Sir B Alston, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, March 4, 1921 Sir B Alston, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, April 5, 1921, and April 10, 1921 Sir B Alston, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, May 5, 1921 Sir B Alston, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, June 4, 1921 Sir B Alston, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, July 4, 1921 [FO 371/6614] Sir B Alston, Peking to Marquess Curzon, Foreign Office, August 5, 1921 Sir B Alston, Peking to Marquess Curzon, Foreign Office, September 1, 1921 Sir B Alston, Peking to Marquess Curzon, Foreign Office, October 4, 1921 Sir B Alston, Peking to Marquess Curzon, Foreign Office, November 3, 1921 [FO 371/6615] Sir B Alston, Peking (to Marquess Curzon), Foreign Office, December 4, 1921 [FO 371/6616] Sir B Alston, Peking (to Marquess Curzon), Foreign Office, January 4, 1922 [FO 371/7996] Quarterly Consular Summaries 473 Sir B Alston, British Legation, Peking to Foreign Office, July 6,1921, letter explaining that the intelligence reports for the March quarter, rather than the summary of them, has been forwarded. However, subsequently, these reports have not been kept. [FO 371/6635] Sir B Alston, British Legation, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, 479 November 28,1921, enclosing the summary for the June quarter Sir B Alston, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, December 23, 507 1921 enclosing the summary for the September quarter [FO 371/8012] The summary for the December quarter has not been kept Periodic Despatches 533 Sir B Alston, Peking to Earl Curzon, Foreign Office, April 1, 1921 [FO 371/6614] Sir B Alston, Peking to Marquess Curzon, Foreign Office, July 11, 1921, with one enclosure: extract from the Government Gazette, April 4, 1921 Sir B Alston, Peking to Marquess Curzon, Foreign Office, September 1, 1921, with one enclosure: Translation of General Wu P'ei-fu's Circular Telegram [FO 371/6615] Sir B Alston, Peking to Marquess Curzon, Foreign Office, December 19, 1921 [FO 371/7996] Occasional Despatches 551 Memorandum on the Political Situation and Conditions in China, by C W Campbell, dated August 18, 1921 [FO 371/6615] Foreign Office, note dated 3 January 1922 covering report entitled 'China: The Political Situation' [FO 371/7996] Annual Report 587 Sir B Alston, Peking to Marquess Curzon, Foreign Office, February 14, 1922 forwarding the Annual Report of events in China for the year 1921, with addendum, dated October 5, 1922 [FO 371/8033]
Library of Congress subject headings for this publication: China Politics and government 1912-1949 Sources, China Politics and government 1949-1976 Sources, China Foreign relations 1912-1949 Sources, China Foreign relations 1949-1976 Sources