By ANDREW KUECH, 7/16/2015. I’ve been here a week already, which seems pretty crazy. I must admit, my plans for an intensive trip to the archives in Hong Kong during the beautiful summer months, from a library that overlooks stunning mountains and ocean, has been a little tough to swallow at times since being outside looks so great. Nonetheless, the USC library here has been, as expected, a huge treasure trove of resources for me to use for my research project. Though the library itself is a little sullen and quiet, there are stacks and stacks of old newspapers, magazines, journals, maps and books that make a nerdy PhD student really excited. Its been a little sobering being confronted with walls of resources all written in Chinese—my learning curve for remembering and using all of my Chinese skills has been pretty steep—but I think Im managing pretty well.
I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the principle reason researchers of Chinese Communist history migrate to the USC archive here is for its access to a particular newspaper, unexcitedly titled “Internal Reference” or 内部参考 Neibu Cankao. For scholars of Communist history like myself, this newspaper is often seen as one of the few open lenses to the political ideas of Communist leaders during the first 20 years of Communist rule in Mainland China. Because the Chinese government was, and remains today, incredibly secretive with any information about its policy-making, researchers are always looking for any strands of information that could reveal the inner workings of the Communist Party outside of its public statements. Neibu Cankao, however, offers a critical glimpse into the thinking and concerns of Communist party leaders during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. It was the internal newspaper only accessible to Communist Party members and leaders. For this reason, this newspaper has all sorts of information otherwise hidden within public or common books, magazines and newspapers of the time. This newspaper is totally inaccessible now, to my knowledge, outside of the USC library here. And even here, access to the newspaper is really restricted. I needed to apply for special use privileges just to be able to see it. Users need to sit in a special room under supervision to read through it, or use a secured computer that has a searchable database of the contents of the newspapers headlines. On top of that every person is only allowed to print 400 pages of the newspaper in their lifetime, and only 60 pages per day. So the pressure is on to make sure youre finding and printing just the documents you need. Its pretty difficult working through all the newspaper, especially as there is no English to use as a crutch…but Im plodding away.