Subject guides: Chinese Studies: Databases

What is a database?

Databases provide access to high-quality peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, dissertations and other sources.

These databases have been especially chosen for this subject area.

When carrying out your research for a piece of work, you will need to search more than one database to find all of the journal articles relevant to your topic, as each database covers different journals.

Databases - Chinese Studies

The boxes below list a collection of databases that the University Library provides to help you identify key literature in all the areas of East Asian Studies.

Most of these tools are available only to University of Manchester staff and students. Many require you to enter your Central username and password when off-campus. You can obtain your username and password from the Library's computer cluster machines. Alternatively you can use the IT Account Manager.

Full text databases - Chinese Studies

China Academic Journals , China Master's Dissertations & China Doctoral Dissertations are cross searchable.

Apabi Digital
covers many research fields of Chinese Studies such as literature, history, politics, translation studies, foreign relationship and business. It comprises a growing collection of Chinese language e-books, newspapers and yearbooks with full-text accessibility.
Archives Unbound
Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of primary source historical documents. It covers a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history.
Artemis Primary Sources - China from Empire to Republic
China from Empire to Republic is available via Artemis Primary Sources as well. The collection contains missionary, academic, and literary periodicals in English published in or about China. Missionary, Sinology and Literary periodicals 1817-1949 documents the thoughts of Chinese intellectuals and Western missionaries and diplomats about China, and their efforts to understand Chinese culture and transform the nation in the years before 1949.
China: Culture and Society
Spanning three centuries (c.1750-1929), this resource makes available for the first time extremely rare pamphlets from Cornell University Library’s Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia. The resource is full-text searchable, allowing for the collection to be comprehensively explored and studied. In addition, China: Culture and Society features a host of secondary resources, including scholarly essays, an interactive chronology, mini guides, and editors’ choices from the collection.
China: Trade, Politics and Culture 1793-1980
is based on collections of manuscript materials held at the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the British Library in London.
China Academic Journals
is a full-text journal database covering the contents of over 7,200 titles published in China since 1994.
China Data online
brings together a tremendous knowledgebase of government statistics. With thousands of available variables and a powerful online search platform in English and Chinese, China Data Online is the premier tool for China studies.
China Doctoral Dissertations
provide comprehensive, high-quality database service of dissertations and theses from 300 associations of China. It contains more than 70,000 full texts of master's and doctor's theses on Literature, History and Philosophy field from 1999 to current date.
China EBook Hub
The University of Manchester Library has access to over 100 Chinese e-books through the China National Publications Import & Export (Group) Corporation.
China Masters Dissertations
provide comprehensive, high-quality database service of dissertations and theses from 300 associations of China. It contains more than 70,000 full texts of master's and doctor's theses on Literature, History and Philosophy field from 1999 to current date.
Gale Primary Sources
It provides an interactive research environment that allows researchers to cross-search Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) and to discover and analyze content in new ways.
JSTOR (Journal Storage)
Used by millions for research, teaching, and learning. With more than a thousand academic journals and over one million images, letters, and other primary sources, JSTOR is one of the world's most trusted sources for academic content.
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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that includes full-text content of more than 1,300 academic journals. This includes scholarship published in over one thousand of the highest-quality academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Oxford Language Dictionaries Online
Oxford Language Dictionaries Online provides fully searchable bilingual Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish dictionaries.
Periodicals Archive Online
Providing access to full-text articles from over 550 journals published between 1665 and 2000, this major online periodical archive can be searched by author, keyword and/or subject.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chinese Newspapers Collection
This resource provides a collection of Chinese Newspapers from 1832-1953. It gives genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
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The following newspapers are included:

The China Press (1925-1938)
The China Weekly Review (1923-1950)
Millard's China National Review (1919-1919)
Millard's Review of the Far East (1917-1921)
The North - China Herald (1850-1867)
The North - China Herald and Market Report (1867-1869)
The North - China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette (1870-1941)
The Shanghai Times (1914-1921)
The Weekly Review (1922-1923)
The Weekly Review of the Far East (1921-1922)
Renmin Ribao Digital Archive
Renmin Ribeo Digital Archive, known in English as the People's Daily, is the official channel of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and the central newspaper of record for the modern Chinese state. Since it's founding in 1946, Renmin Ribao has published the official policies and viewpoints of China's central government and includes politically orientated speeches and articles, and covers major events both at home and abroad.
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Researchers can access 65 years of full text and full image articles from Renmin Ribao, with the database offering an intuitive search function for both images and articles.
Shen Bao Digital Archive
The Shen Bao Digital Archive gives a unique insight into the transition of China from the nineteenth century until Mao. This archive presents the complete collection of all issues, from the newspaper's founding in 1872 to 1949 and contains more than two million articles. Both the full text and the full image are retrievable in a single search. Shen Bao was founded by Englishman Ernest Major, but uniquely, as a newspaper for Chinese readers, written by Chinese reoprters. During its existence, Shen Bao moved from a conservative to a more liberal perspective, and played a pivotal role in the formation of public opinion in the imperial period and into the beginnings of modern China.
Sinica Sinoweb
Sinica Sinoweb is a collection of key journals with deep archives from the Academia Sinica in Taipei. Journals included in the resources have been published as early as 1928 (varies by title).
South China Morning Post
The South China Morning Post 《南華早報》 is a Hong Kong English-language newspaper. First published in 1903, the newspaper has developed a good reputation for authoritative, influential and independent reporting on Hong Kong, China and the rest of Asia.
Taiwan Electronic Periodical Services
Taiwan Electronic Periodical Services (TEPS) is an on-line database which offers the largest number of full-text Taiwanese periodicals in the world, covering Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, Applied Sciences, and Medical and Life Sciences.
Translations of the Peking gazette online
Translations of the Peking Gazette Online is a comprehensive database of approximately 8,500 pages of English-language renderings of official edicts and memorials from the Qing dynasty that cover China's long nineteenth century from the Macartney Mission in 1793 to the abdication of the last emperor in 1912.

My Learning Essentials

Getting results: guides to searching databases
This set of online resources will demonstrate the process of performing a search on a number of database platforms.

View all Getting results guides
View Getting results: searching China Integrated Knowledge Resources (you will need your University of Manchester username and password to access this resource)

View all workshops and online resources in this area on the
My Learning Essentials webpages.

Bibliographic Databases - Chinese Studies

British humanities index (BHI)
Indexes 400 English-language periodicals in fields including history, language and literature, film, performing arts, philosophy, and related subjects. It also includes reviews of books, TV and radio programmes and films.
MLA International Bibliography
(1963 to date) is produced by the Modern Language Association of America and indexes 'critical materials on modern language, literature, linguistics and folklore', giving access to over 3000 international journal titles and series and monographs, working papers, bibliographies and other sources.
ProQuest
A useful database covering a wide range of Arts and Humanities subjects
Web of Science
Providing access to the Arts and Humanities Index (1975 to date) and the Social Sciences Index (1956 to date) this citation index groups together all newly published items that have cited (i.e. referred to) the same earlier work. This allows you to retrieve new material, rather than tracing older references on a subject.