It's true what they say--time really does fly when you are having fun. It is hard to believe that my research trip to China is almost already over. After having spent two and half weeks in Shanghai and about one week in Beijing, I've accomplished a lot, even more than I expected. I had several successful forays into archives here in which I collected dozens of documents from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and have had a handful of extremely fruitful meetings and reunions with Chinese professors and old friends. But I still can't help but feel like I have more questions than answers, that there still more people I would like to meet, and that there more archives I wish I could explore. I simply need more time!

Though disappointed I have to leave China so soon, I am delighted with how this trip has turned out. In the remainder of the post I offer some initial thoughts on my research--what I learned and what remains to be done.

When I applied for funding from the Sigur Center my idea was to conduct research on China's relations with the Soviet Union inside of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Located in the far northwest and situated along the Sino-Soviet border, Xinjiang was both an area for cooperation in the 1950s and then a sticking point in the 1960s between Beijing and Moscow. During a previous research trip to Beijing I discovered hundreds of documents on Sino-Soviet relations in Xinjiang at the Foreign Ministry Archive, and so my research plan for this summer was to really dig into those materials.

But as fate would have it, the Foreign Ministry Archive is no longer as accessible as it once was. So instead of Beijing, I came here to Shanghai to get a lay of the land in terms of the local archives. I couldn't be happier with what I discovered here. I found hundreds of documents--many more than I could possibly process in just a few short weeks--on the connections between Shanghai and Xinjiang in general and on the dispatch of perhaps 100,000 Chinese youth from Shanghai to the far northwest in the 1960s in particular.

Shanghai youth in Xinjiang. Image via SHZQ.org

This is a subject which I admittedly knew little about prior to my forays into the archives here, but I have become absolutely fascinated by this topic. I  am eager to continue studying the relocation of the Shanghai youth to Xinjiang both as a political movement and as a human experience, but in the mean time here are some preliminary thoughts:

Most of the documents I've obtained were produced by and for political leaders and deal with the mobilization of Shanghai's educated youth to take part in Xinjiang's economic development in the 1960s. The impetus for the mass mobilization seems to be two-fold, both pragmatic and yet strongly ideological.

Many of the documents, for example, refer to the growing urban population and the increasing shortage of jobs for middle school and high school graduates. Xinjiang, it is often noted, however, has precisely the opposite problem: not enough people for a land of great economic promise and opportunity. So Shanghai's leaders believed there was a convergence of interests and needs between the two regions and thus began the campaign to send youth to the northwest.

A handful of documents from the Huangpu District Archives

At the same time, many of the documents also feature Chinese political leaders emphasizing that Shanghai's youth had grown too comfortable living in urban environments and had come to despise agricultural labor, look down upon factory workers, and in general lacked the revolutionary vigor of the older generations. Wanting to correct these ideological imbalances and ensure that socialism in China would continue to develop unhindered, Chinese leaders believed that it would be a valuable experience for Chinese youth to take part in hard labor in rugged Xinjiang.

In future research I will need to continue to tease out both the origins of the movement to send Shanghai's educated youth to Xinjiang as well the evolution of the movement as it unfolded from 1963 onward. Significantly, however, I also need to understand the human component of this story. These were real people sent to Xinjiang--some of them enthusiastically went to the northwest (I found one document describing how a teenager wrote a letter demanding he be allowed to go to Xinjiang using not a pen, but his own blood), while many of them were forced to move faraway from families and friends to a strange and hostile environment. Though additional documents from Shanghai's archives will help reveal the personal stories of this experience, oral history could be a better method to capture and understand this history. Many of the youth petitioned the government for permission to return to Shanghai in the 1980s, and those that are still alive today should be in their 60s and 70s. It can only be hoped that some of them will be willing to open up to an interested stranger.

Charles Kraus, Ph.D. Student, Department of History
Sigur Center 2013 Research Fellow
Shanghai, China

In China, you often hear about “guanxi,” or one’s personal relationships. Guanxi is the grease that keeps society’s wheels turning in China; for a foreign researcher such as myself, guanxi is absolutely essential for a successful trip.

But why is guanxi so important for research?

In a previous post on Asia on E Street, I had mentioned that I needed something called a “letter of introduction” in order to gain entry into Shanghai's archives. This is a letter that the Director of the Sigur Center, Edward McCord, wrote on my behalf and which verifies that I am student at GWU. The letter, written on official GWU letterhead, also requests that I be allowed to conduct research.

Having this type of letter from one's home institution is typically a requirement for getting into Chinese archives, but often it alone is not enough. Archives also want to see a similar letter from a Chinese institution or university (what is called a “guonei danwei,” or domestic work unit). As I wrote about before, for example, the Zhabei District Archives would not grant me any access without a letter from a Chinese institution, while the Shanghai Municipal Archives only granted me one-week of conditional access pending delivery of this letter.

Because I am not formally affiliated with any Chinese university or research institute during this short trip, I have had to rely on my network of personal relationships in China to obtain this type of letter. I asked a friend from the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, who I met more than four years ago, if his danwei could prepare a letter of introduction on my behalf, and he wholeheartedly agreed to do so. 

When I returned to Zhabei District Archives with this letter in hand, the archivists immediately opened up their doors; at the Shanghai Municipal Archives, my conditional access was lifted and I now am able to complete research there indefinitely.

Beyond the practical value of personal relationships in China, having a network here is also important for other reasons. In between days spent in the archives, I have made a point to connect with and meet Chinese scholars who are pursuing similar research as I am. In Shanghai, I met with faculty from East China Normal University, and in Beijing, I met professors from Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Through these meetings I have learned about new sources (or better yet, many scholars often freely share PDFs of documents they’ve obtained from archives in China and elsewhere), have been encouraged to pursue certain tracks of research or research questions, and have had my opinions on Chinese history both validated and challenged. These meetings have also been extremely helpful for planning future research trips to China. My contact at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is encouraging me to come to his institute as a Visiting Scholar during my next research stint in the PRC. These meetings are also an opportunity for a bit of fun--one Peking University professor treated me to dinner, beers, and a musical performance at one of Beijing's North Korean restaurants.

With a network of contacts, colleagues, friends, and mentors in China, I have discovered that a day not spent in the archives is not necessarily a day wasted. Chinese scholars can be remarkably helpful and friendly, even to complete strangers. Networks in China are not just helpful then; they are absolutely essential.

Charles Kraus, Ph.D. Student, Department of History
Sigur Center 2013 Research Fellow
Beijing, China