Author: Cameron Campbell

Newly published volume 3 of Big Data and the Study of Chinese History (大数据与中国历史研究) includes chapters by Lee-Campbell Group members

Volume 3 of Big Data and the Study of Chinese History 大数据与中国历史研究，第三辑, edited by Fu Haiyan 付海晏 of the Central China Normal University School of History and Culture 华中师范大学历史文化学院 and published by the Social Sciences Academic Press (China) 社会科学文献出版社, contains a number of chapters related to Lee-Campbell Group Projects, or by members of the Lee-Campbell Group.

Here is a link to the complete Chinese language text of the State views and Local Views paper at Weixin: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/wGfMhYIogXHlVGwosIp5_Q

Here is an announcement of the volume at the web page of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Modern History web page. The book should be available for order online in the coming weeks.

Chapters by Lee-Campbell Group members include the following:

An introduction by Bijia Chen to the process of constructing the CGED-Q, its current status, and its future prospects:
“中国历史官员量化数据库——清代”的建设过程、现状与前景 (陈必佳)

A Chinese translation of a paper by Cameron Campbell and James Lee comparing the recording of families in genealogies and household registers in Qing Liaoning that originally appeared in History and Computing. It shows that there were biases in genealogies beyond what has been recognized in earlier literature:
从国家和地方的角度看人口记录和行为 (康文林 李中清 翻:谌畅)

Essays by James Lee, Yuxue Ren, and Liang Chen on big data and quantitative history:
大数据与中国社会经济史 (李中清)
在定量分析与传统史学研究方法之间 (任玉雪)
如何做好的量化历史研究 (梁晨)

Two papers by Lee-Campbell Group PhD students Yang Li and Xue Qin:
金陵大学学生来源与毕业走向（1928—1937）(杨莉)
《拓务统计》与日本殖民统治(薛勤)

The volume also includes a paper by an MA Student in the Central China Normal University program in Historical Big Data, Cai Xiaoying, that uses the publicly released CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release, and is based on a paper that she originally wrote for the Historical Big Data class that Cameron Campbell taught in Wuhan in 2019:
清末地域回避制度实施之再探 (蔡晓莹)

CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release Tabulation and Visualization Platform

Charlie Liu, an undergraduate in the Quantitative Social Analysis program at HKUST, created a platform for producing tabulations and visualizations with the CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release. At the platform, users can explore the contents of the publicly released CGED-Q  for the period 1900-1912 without having to download data and open it in a statistical package in R or Stata. Among the available variables are province and county of origin, location of current post, Banner status, and exam or purchase degree (出身). Here is the CGED-Q tabulation and visualization platform.

Our CGED-Q project page has more information about the CGED-Q itself, including links to sites where advanced users can download the data to be analyzed in a statistical package like R or Stata. These sites also include documentation.

As a reminder, if you’re looking for a specific official, the entire CGED-Q is searchable via this platform, originally created by Fi Siwei and housed on a server by the HKUST VisGroup.

 

New Lee-Campbell Group Dataverse at Harvard Dataverse, with CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release

We have created a Lee-Campbell Group Dataverse at Harvard Dataverse to host the CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release and future publicly releases. This will complement the sites that already host our public data at the HKUST Dataspace and the Renmin University Institute of Qing History. We hope that this will facilitate access to the data by users in North America and also increase the visibility of the publicly released data.

Lee-Campbell Group Dataverse at Harvard Dataverse

CGED-Q Jinshenlu 1900-1912 Public Release at Harvard Dataverse

Data will continue to be available at the existing sites. Please see the CGED-Q page for links.

Cameron Campbell’s 2020 paper on exam degree holders at the end of the Qing mentioned in 2020年历史学研究发展报告

Cameron Campbell’s 2020 paper in 社会科学辑刊 on the careers of exam degree holders at the end of the Qing was mentioned in a year-end report on the development of the discipline of history in 2020 (2020年历史学研究发展报告) published at China Social Science News (中国社会科学网), which is the official media platform of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (中国社会科学院). It was one of six papers listed in the section on Modern Chinese History and National History (中国近代史, 国史研究) subsection on National Governance (聚焦国家治理).

Paper on CGED-Q visualization in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics by Bijia Chen, Cameron Campbell and others

Overview of CareerLens

Bijia Chen and Cameron Campbell were co-authors on a paper titled “Interactive Visual Exploration of Longitudinal Historical Career Mobility Data” that just appeared in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics that introduces CareerLens, a visualization platform for exploring the careers of officials and their social networks in the China Government Employee Dataset-Qing. The lead author, Yifang Wang, is a PhD student of Professor Huamin Qu, a colleague in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST whose research focuses on visualization and graphics. Other co-authors include Professor Qu and members of his VisLab group.

Here is a link to the paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9382844

Wang Yifang’s website has a page about the paper that includes a downloadable PDF, for those of you who can’t access it from the IEEE website.

An example of the CareerLens interface

 

And the abstract…

Abstract: The increased availability of quantitative historical datasets has provided new research opportunities for multiple disciplines in social science. In this paper, we work closely with the constructors of a new dataset, CGED-Q (China Government Employee Database-Qing), that records the career trajectories of over 340,000 government officials in the Qing bureaucracy in China from 1760 to 1912. We use these data to study career mobility from a historical perspective and understand social mobility and inequality. However, existing statistical approaches are inadequate for analyzing career mobility in this historical dataset with its fine-grained attributes and long time span, since they are mostly hypothesis-driven and require substantial effort. We propose CareerLens, an interactive visual analytics system for assisting experts in exploring, understanding, and reasoning from historical career data. With CareerLens, experts examine mobility patterns in three levels-of-detail, namely, the macro-level providing a summary of overall mobility, the meso-level extracting latent group mobility patterns, and the micro-level revealing social relationships of individuals. We demonstrate the effectiveness and usability of CareerLens through two case studies and receive encouraging feedback from follow-up interviews with domain experts

Dong Hao publishes new article in Chinese Sociological Review on family background effects on labor market outcomes of first-generation college graduates in China

Dong Hao and his collaborator Fan Xiaoguang have just published a paper in Chinese Sociological Review titled “What enables the “meritocratic power” of a college degree? Changing labor market outcomes of first-generation college graduates in post-revolution China.”

Here is the abstract:

Taking advantage of changes in college admissions and the labor market in post-revolution China, this study sheds light on the institutional conditions under which a college degree may “equalize” the influence of family educational background on labor market outcomes. We examine differences in the first job’s occupational attainment and economic returns between first-generation, second-generation, and non-college graduates. We compare birth cohorts with distinctive experiences, some of whom entered college through political recommendation while others did so through objective examination, and some of whom attained their first job through state assignment while others did so through market matching. We find that a college degree only equalized occupational attainment in cohort 1980–1992, who experienced expanded test-based admissions and a developed labor market. Within-occupation economic returns were equalized in cohort 1966–1979, who experienced test-based admissions and yet an underdeveloped labor market, but appeared to be unequal again in cohort 1980–1992, echoing rising social inequality.

Congratulations Dong Hao and Fan Xiaoguang!

 

Beijing Science Press publishes Liang Chen’s new book on Republican-era Tsinghua University faculty and staff

Liang Chen’s new book A Study of the Living Standards and Social Structures of Faculty and Staff in Republic of China: Focusing on Tsinghua Campus was published in November 2020 by Beijing Science Press. Publication was supported by funding from the National Social Science Foundation.

The book systematically examines the numbers, work, family patterns, living standards, social status, and educational attainment of every category of Republican-era university employees through a case study of the Tsinghua campus.  According to the results, from the perspective of living standards there were multiple strata in campus society. The income disparity between faculty, staff, and other groups was large. This created a structure in which differences were stark. Stratification in the “Tsinghua campus” was ostensibly reasonable, in principle based on position or title and the level of education.  However, underpinning this structure were inequalities in access to education by wealth and geography origin associated with the general acceptance of the “Western learning” model of education and commensurate reduction in the role of education in social integration.

Here is the book page at Douban.

梁晨新著《民国大学教职员工生活水平与生活结构研究：以清华为中心》（A Study of the Living Standards and Social Structures of Faculty and Staff in Republic of China: Focusing on Tsinghua Campus）于2020年11月，在北京科学出版社出版。该书为“国家社科基金后期资助项目”，主要内容是对以“清华园”为代表的民国大学校园中各类从业群体的工作性质、人口数量、家庭规模、生活水平、社会地位以及教育获得的系统梳理和相关关系分析。分析发现“清华园”这样的校园社会中，以生活水平为标准，存在着多个阶层，教职员工各职业群体间的经济收

入相差悬殊，形成了差距鲜明，“恍若隔世”的生活水平结构。这种“校园社会”的阶层结构，基本以个体的职务或职称等级为基础，并以个体的教育获得差异为“合理性”依据，但背后实质上是近代中国全面接受“西学”教育体系过程中，教育获得极大地被财富和地理分布所左右，教育的社会融合功能大为降低。

Interview of James Lee by Alan Macfarlane in 2002

In 2002, when James Lee and Cameron Campbell and other group members were conducting fieldwork in Liaoning, they were accompanied by Alan Macfarlane and Sarah Harrison. Macfarlane interviewed James Lee. We just learned that the interview had been posted in its entirety on Youtube, apparently in 2012. This is a remarkably complete recap of our work up through 2002.

 

New paper on prefects during the Qing using the CGED-Q

Hu Heng at the Institute of Qing History at Renmin University just published a paper on the appointment of prefects during the Qing, with Bijia Chen and me as second and third authors. The paper makes use of spatial data as well as the government ratings of prefectures that determined who controlled the appointment of their prefects, and makes use of the CGED-Q to examine the qualifications, and previous and subsequent appointments of prefects. The paper is available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.6743%2fNAJ.202008_37.0009 Here is the abstract:
Prefects played an essential role in the system of local government during the Qing dynasty. Examining the process by which they were appointed, including exceptions and variations, sheds light on the governing strategies of the Qing state. We conduct spatial and quantitative analysis of the appointment of prefects based on the most recent data on the government’s ratings of the significance and difficulty (chongfanpinan and quefen) for each prefecture. The results reveal the importance of the process of appointment of variations across prefectures in transportation, government affairs, revenue collection, and public security. They collectively determined who had the authority to appoint the prefect for a prefecture: the Emperor (gingzhi que), the Board of Personnel (buxuan que), or the Governor-General (tidiao que). Appointments by the Emperor accounted for 48.3 percent of prefectures. These were in the most important regions of the country. Appointments by the Governor-General accounted for 26.1 percent of prefectures. At the beginning they were mainly in the regions where the Miao resided, including Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Hunan. Later, some prefectures on the provincial boundaries were also included. In the late Qing, prefects in all the newly created provinces were appointed by Govermors-General. Appointments by the Board of Personnel accounted for 25.6% of prefectures and they were concentrated in areas close to the boundaries of inland provinces. The spatial distribution of the classifications generally followed the government’s assessment of the difficulties of governing various regions in China, but there were exceptions and problems like the differentiation of treatment in the Southwestern boundary regions, neglect of the change of prefectures and classifications in coastal border areas and qualification immutability. The classification of prefectures was closely related to the appointment of prefects. We analyzed the career histories of 3403 prefects recorded in 37752 entries about Qing civil servants extracted from the 3,000,000 in nearly CGED-Q database. Using STATA to categorize, summarize, correlate and track these data ,, we examine the time trends in the characteristics of prefects, including the proportions of Manchu or Han prefects and their province of origin. For the latter, we focused specifically on the increase in the number of prefects from Hunan in the late Qing period. The results of our analysis make use of new data to advance our understanding of the political geography of China in the late Qing and the Republican periods. Regarding the career transitions in the civil service, 61.9 percent of prefects were transferred from posts in the central govermment and only 35.8 percent were promoted from posts in local govermments. This undoubtedly had a negative effect on the motivation of county magistrates. Prospects for promotion for prefects was generally high: 21 percent would reach higher office. For prefects who served in prefectures categorized as most significant (zuiyao gue) and significant (vao gue), the chance of promotion was between 23.5 and 26.3 percent. Those who were prefects in provincial capitals had even higher chances of being promoted: 40.5 percent. The distribution of control over the appointment of prefects and the institutional changes over time reveal the tension and competition over power between the central and local government. In the Qing, governance at the prefectural level was characterized as ＂blocking between the upper and the lower [level of government]＂. This was partly driven by the structure of the system, according to which officials were more likely to manage other officials than govern people, and prefects were more likely to be transferred from the central government than promoted from lower levels of local government. The increased power of Governor-Generals and the prevalence of temporary appointments for prefects may have been responses to these drawbacks, but the imbalance of the distribution of power was also a challenge for the state.
胡恆(Hu Heng), 陳必佳(Bijia Chen) and 康文林(Cameron D. Campbell. 2020. 清代知府選任的空間與量化分析——以政區分等、《縉紳錄》數據庫為中心 (The Appointment of Prefects during the Qing —- A Spatial and Quantitative Analysis Focusing on the System of Administrative Division and Using the CGED-Q). 新亞學報(New Asia Journal).37(August):339-398. http://dx.doi.org/10.6743%2fNAJ.202008_37.0009

New paper recapping 40 years of ‘big data’ research on population, family and social history by James Lee, Cameron Campbell and collaborators

James Lee and Cameron Campbell in Daoyi in 1987

Cameron Campbell and James Lee just published an article on the contributions of the Lee-Campbell Research Group to a new scholarship of discovery in Chinese population history, family history, and socio-economic history based on our construction and analysis from 1979 to 2020 of large historical datasets from largely archival records.  Our paper first introduces these datasets, then describes our joint research, and concludes with a summary of our major analytic results. This publication is an invited contribution to a special issue of Historical Life Course Studies which introduces the major historical population databases. Papers on the Quebec BALSAC project and the Historical Sample of the Netherlands are already posted.

Here is the web page:

https://doi.org/10.51964/hlcs9303

This both a career retrospective and a comprehensive summary of everything that James, Cameron and the Lee-Campbell Group have done together over more than four decades that ties everything together and shows how each project led to the next. It starts from our early efforts in population history using household registers, and proceeds sequentially up to the present day, including our new projects on university students, civil officials, and educated professionals.

In front of the No. 1 Historical Archives in Beijing in 1987

The section on the history of our collaboration will hopefully be the most readable: it starts with James Lee’s visit to China in 1979 to look for records in historical archives that could be turned into databases, then Cameron  shows up in 1987 at the end his sophomore year at Caltech. Later others joined to form what is now the Lee-Campbell Group. We also talk about our involvement in the Eurasia Project in Population and Family History including what we hope will be interesting anecdotes, reminisces, and reflections.

The introduction to our databases and summary of results, meanwhile, is the first time we have put almost everything we have done together in one place. We hope that it will be useful for those who may be familiar with specific pieces of our work to gain a better sense of the larger research agenda In into which these pieces fit.

This was a fun paper to write, especially the history section which includes some discussion of our faculty years at Caltech 1982-2002, UCLA 1996-2015, Michigan 1980-1982, 1995-1996, 2002-2009 and most recently HKUST 2009/2013-onwards and the contributions of these institutions and our colleagues to advancing our research projects.