The Lee-Campbell Group met in person at the HKUST Guangzhou campus on March 8, 2023. Group members discussed their ongoing projects and their plans for future work. 16 participants attended in person, and Bamboo joined online.


James Lee's and Cameron Campbell's Research Group 李中清及康文林的研究團隊
The Lee-Campbell Group met in person at the HKUST Guangzhou campus on March 8, 2023. Group members discussed their ongoing projects and their plans for future work. 16 participants attended in person, and Bamboo joined online.
Four members of the Lee-Campbell group will present 4 papers in 4 sessions and chair 1 session at the Association for Asian Studies meeting in Columbus, Ohio. Below is a schedule based on the AAS program.
5-007. Migration and Empire Building: New Insights into Movement Dynamics in Qing Dynasty Manchuria
Conv. Center, Room A125, Level 1
Friday, March 14, 3:30 PM–5:00 PM
Chair: Yuanyuan Qiu, China Academy of Social Sciences
Frontier, Convicts, and Slavery in the Early Qing Empire
Xiao Chen, University of California, Riverside
Leaving Manchuria: Imperial Artisans and Post-Conquest Migration in the Early Qing Dynasty
Chenxi Luo, Reed College
The Birth of Andong: Cross-Border Commerce and Immigration to Qing Manchuria
Yuanchong Wang, University of Delaware
Navigating Surveillance: Individual Lives and State Control in Nineteenth-Century Manchuria
Shuang Chen, University of Iowa
Discussant:
Seonmin Kim, Korea University
Area of Study: East and Inner Asia
7-016. New Databases for the Study of Chinese History
Conv. Center, Room B240, Level 2
Saturday, March 15, 10:30 AM–12:00 PM
Chair: Fangqi Wen, Ohio State University
Introduction to the Chinese Political Elite Database, Version 2.0
Junyan Jiang, Columbia University
The China Government Employee Database-Qing (CGED-Q): Current Status and Future Prospects
Cameron Campbell, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
Introducing the Chinese Archaeological Database (CADB)
Zhiwu Chen, University of Hong Kong
9-006. New Perspectives on the Mao Era in China: Boundaries and Boundary Crossing
Hyatt, Marion, 2nd Floor
Saturday, March 15, 4:00 PM–5:30 PM
Rethinking Land Reform: Equalization and Inequalization of Lands at the Village Level
Getting Revenge on Women’s Day: Struggle in and Beyond Land Reform
Brian DeMare, Tulane University
Extended Kin Networks of Political and Social Elite in Rural China, c.1965
Matthew Noellert, Hitotsubashi University
Discussant:
Jean Oi, Stanford University
9-012. Resilient Yet Fragile: New Takes on Patriarchy and its Discontents in Qing and Modern China
SPONSORED BY AAS EAST AND INNER ASIA (EIAC)
Hyatt, Fairfield, 2nd Floor
Saturday, March 15, 4:00 PM–5:30 PM
Chair: Janet Theiss, University of Utah
“Weak Patriarchy” and Young Women’s Pursuit of Intimacy in Eighteenth-Century China
Stephanie Painter, University of Chicago
The Patriarch in Letters: Masculinity, Family Conflict, and Mythmaking in Late-Qing China
Xueqian Zhang, Johns Hopkins University
Runaway Women, Desperate Men: Petition Letters, Fragile Masculinity, and State Paternalism in Mao’s China
Xiangning Li, University of Chicago
Discussant:
Margaret Kuo, California State University, Long Beach
11-009. From Elephants to Camels: The Role of Animals in the Qing Empire’s Governance and Social Transformation
Conv. Center, Room A124, Level 1
Sunday, March 16, 9:00 AM–10:30 AM
Chair: Shuang Chen, University of Iowa
From Hunting to Farming: The Transformation of the Duyusi Households Under the Imperial Household Department in Qing China
Yuanyuan Qiu, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Qing Administration of Inner Mongolia as Seen from Animal Theft Cases
Elegy of the Elephants: A Study of The Demise of the Imperial Elephant System During the Late Qing Dynasty
Xiaoshan Pei, Chinese University of Hong Kong
From Nomadic Roots to Commercial Enterprise: The Development of Chinese Camel Caravan Trade in Qing Inner Asia
George Qiao, Amherst College
Discussant:
Jonathan Schlesinger, Indiana University-Bloomington
Ten members of the Lee-Campbell group will be presenting seven papers and participating as co-authors in one paper presented by others in four sessions at the Social Science History Association meetings in Toronto. Group members will be also participating in an Author-Meets-Critics session. Below is a schedule based on the SSHA program.
Thursday, October 31, 10:00 AM – 11:45 AM
Session 16
Education, Knowledge, and Science in China 1920-2020
Education, Knowledge, and Science
1. Regional Human Capital Development in China: Comparing 75,000 Elite University Students in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai, 1912-1952. Haozhe Han, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
2. Social Origins, Education, and Impact of 1700 China-U.S. Physics and Related Science Disciplines PhD Students to the USA, 1979-1989. James Z. Lee, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Shengbin Wei, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Dongqian Liu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
3. Social Origins, Education, and Impact of 1400 Chinese Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Students to the USA, 1909-1949. Chen Liang, Nanjing University; Yueran Hou, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
4. Comparing Medicine and Engineering: The Education and Employment of 50,000 Medical Doctors and Engineers in China, 1905-1950. Bamboo Ren, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Friday, November 1, 10:00 AM – 11:45 AM
Session 78
Databases for the Quantitative History of China
Data Infrastructure
Chair: Li Ji, University of Iowa
2. Databases for the Study of Qing (1644-1911) Political and Educational Elites. Cameron Campbell, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
3. Databases for the Study of Educational, Professional, and Political Elites in the Republican China (1911-1949). James Z. Lee, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Bamboo Ren, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Friday, November 1, 3:45 PM – 5:30 PM
Session 121
Power Dynamics: Patriarchy, Slaveholding, and Class Struggles
Family Demography
3. Never Forget the Struggle over Class: An Introduction to the China Rural Revolution Dataset – Siqing. Matthew Noellert, Hitotsubashi University
Saturday, November 2, 1:15 PM – 3:00 PM
Session 165
Determinants of Mortality: Disease, Disability, and Climate Impacts
Family Demography
2. Disability, Disease, and Mortality in Northeast China, 1749-1909. Ruijie Liu, Peking University; Hao Dong, Peking University; Cameron Campbell, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; James Z. Lee, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Saturday, November 2, 1:15 PM – 3:00 PM
Session 176
Author Meets Critic: At the Frontier of God’s Empire: A Missionary Odyssey in Modern China by Ji Li
Religion
Discussant: James Lee, Hong Kong University of Science and Techonology
In conjunction with the next public release of data from the CGED-Q JSL, there will be a research conference and training workshop at Central China Normal University July 28-August 3 in conjunction with the next public release of data from the China Government Employee Dataset-Qing (CGED_Q) Jinshenlu. The conference will be July 29 and July 30. Papers that make use of Jinshenlu and related sources are welcome. The training workshop will be July 31-August 2.
Here is the announcement of the research conference in Chinese:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_4A0DO6hglCS2iHW2xscQA
Here is the announcement for the training workshop in Chinese:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XTGWh6r0dWxYUmJAEUtZWA
Cameron Campbell organized a meeting on Chinese Historical Databases: Sources, Methods, Prospects on January 11 and 12, 2024 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The meeting is one in a series of activities intended to promote the development of research infrastructure for studying China’s past organized under the auspices of and with support from the RGC Areas of Excellence Project Quantitative History of China (Chen Zhiwu PI). Staff from the HKUST School of Humanities and Social Sciences, including Lee-Campbell Group RA Shengbin Wei, provided logistical support.
The meeting brought together historians and social scientists constructing databases suited for the quantitative analysis of Chinese history. Participants from Hong Kong, mainland China, and Europe introduced their databases. These included projects that were already complete, others were in progress, and some were in the planning stages. Presentations and discussion focused not only on the content of the databases and prospects for analysis, but nuts and bolts issues related to the construction, preservation, documentation and dissemination of the databases. Several presentations covered techniques being used to automate the creation of databases, including OCR, tokenization, entity recognition, and record linkage.
Lee-Campbell Group members including Cameron Campbell, Dong Hao, Gao Shuaqi, Chen Jun, Wu Yibei, James Lee, Hou Yueran and Matt Noellert made presentations introducing their databases.
In addition to the presenters, other faculty and students attended as observers.
The meeting concluded with the development of plans for training workshops for historians to help them learn how to construct databases and make use of existing ones.
Christian Henriot has written a more detailed discussion of the Chinese historical databases meeting at the ENEP website.
Introductory Remarks by Chen Zhiwu, Cameron Campbell
Chair: Cameron Campbell
Lin Zhan
Content and Value of the Chinese Genealogy Database
Guenther Lomas
The Process of Building the Chinese Genealogy Database
Chen Yuqi
Geocoding the Past World: Unearthing Coordinates of Early China from Texts Using Large Language Models
Chair: Chen Zhiwu
Hu Heng
清史时空综合数据平台-清史地理信息系统和基于地方志的清代职官信息集成数据库
Ma Debin
Quantifying Living Standards, an Overview
Ziang Liu
Early Modern Wages: Data and Limits
Gao Shuaiqi
清代危机(灾害)量化数据的应用与局限
Chair: James Lee
Ma Min
基于近代传教士档案的人物数据库设想
Dong Hao
East Asian Population Databases
Christian Henriot
Modern China Historical Database: Current Status and Future Prospects
Chair: Debin Ma
Cameron Campbell
CGED-Q: Current Status and Future Plans
Chen Jun
CGED-Q ZSBL: Military Officials
Fu Haiyan
近代中国寺庙登记表数据库及初步的研究
Chair: Dong Hao
Yibei Wu
Late Qing and Beiyang Student Records, and Beiyang and ROC Officials
Hou Yueran
Construction of Occupational Database of Tsinghua Students Studying in America with Boxer Indemnity Fund (1909-1944)
Lik Hang Tsui
Ink Trails: Correspondence and Connections in a Dataset of Epistolary Manuscripts from Song China
Chair: Christian Henriot
Matthew Noellert
Lee-Campbell Group Post-1949 Rural Datasets
James Lee
Lee-Campbell Group PRC and ROC Educational, Academic, and Professional Datasets
Chen Ting
Post-1949 County Gazetteers
Pierre Landry
China’s provincial CCP élite since 1921
Panel with remarks by Cameron Campbell, Zhiwu Chen, Christian Henriot, and James Z. Lee
Campbell | Cameron | 康文林 |
Chen | Jun | 陈俊 |
Chen | Ting | 陈婷 |
Chen | Yuqi | 陈钰琪 |
Chen | Zhiwu | 陈志武 |
Dong | Hao | 董浩 |
Fu | Haiyan | 付海晏 |
Gao | Shuaiqi | 高帅奇 |
Henriot | Christian | 安克强 |
Hou | Yueran | 侯玥然 |
Hu | Heng | 胡恒 |
Hu | Cunlu | 胡存璐 |
Kan | Hongliu | 阚红柳 |
Landry | Pierre | 李磊 |
Lee | James | 李中清 |
Lin | Zhan | 林展 |
Liu | Ziang | 刘紫昂 |
Lomas | Guenther | 罗孟德 |
Ma | Debin | 马德斌 |
Ma | Min | 马敏 |
Noellert | Matthew | 倪志宏 |
Tsui | Lik Hang | 徐力恒 |
Xue | Qin | 薛勤 |
Wei | Shengbin | 韦圣彬 |
Yang | Yang | 杨阳 |
Yu | Bruce | 虞越 |
Zhang | Lawrence | 张乐翔 |
Wu | Yibei | 吴艺贝 |
Beth | Kwok | 郭靖琦 |
Miles | Steven | 麦哲维 |
Ten members of the Lee-Campbell group presented four papers and participated as co-authors in one paper presented by others in four sessions at the Social Science History Association meetings in Washington DC this November. Group members also participated in two Author-Meets-Critics sessions. Below is a schedule based on the SSHA program.
Thursday, November 16 / 3:15 PM – 5:00 PM
Session 54
Author Meets Critics: Power for a Price by Lawrence Zhang
Yellowstone (2nd Floor)
Chair: Cameron Campbell, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Discussant: Shuang Chen, University of Iowa
1. Power for a Price: The Purchase of Official Appointments in Qing China • Lawrence Zhang, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Thursday, November 16 / 3:15 PM – 5:00 PM
Session 56
Approaches to Studying Migration in Historical US and Japan
Congressional B (Lobby Level)
1. Migration and Fertility in Early Modern Northeastern Japan. Satomi Kurosu, Reitaku University; Hao Dong, Peking University; Miyuki Takahashi, Rissho University
Saturday, November 18 / 3:15 PM – 5:00 PM
Session 199
Elite Networks in East and West in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Glacier (2nd Floor)
Chair: Cameron Campbell, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
1. Who Ruled China in the 19th Century? Political and Military Elites in the Late Qing • Cameron Campbell, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
4. From the Rest to the Best: China’s Second Silent Revolution • David Y. Zuo, Nanjing University; James Z. Lee, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology;Chen Liang, Nanjing University; Bamboo Yunzhu Ren, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Sunday, November 19 / 8:00 AM –9:45 AM
Session 214
Author Meets Critic: Public Interest and State Legitimation: Early Modern England, Japan, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2023) by Wenkai He
Glacier (2nd Floor)
Chair: James Lee, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Sunday, November 19 / 8:00 AM – 9:45 AM
Session 218
Intergenerational and Intragenerational Social Mobility Using Historical Data
Congressional B (Lobby Level)
2. The Impact of Crises on the Careers of County Magistrates in China during the Qing, 1830 to 1912 •Cameron Campbell, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Shuaiqi Gao, Central China Normal University.
3. Patterns of Occupational and Spatial Mobility in 1940s-1960s Rural China • Matthew Noellert, Hitotsubashi University; Xiangning Li, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Sunday, November 19 / 10:00 AM – 11:45 AM
Session 230
The Ideology and Governance of the Late Chinese Empire
Clark 5 (Floor 7)
1. Managing Land and Producing Citizens: State Building and Identity Formation in Manchuria, 1900-1920 • Shuang Chen, University of Iowa.
The Lee-Campbell Group met in person at HKUST on December 4, 2023. This was our first in-person meeting of nearly all of the affiliates of the group since before 2020. Group members discussed their ongoing projects and their plans for future work. 15 participants attended in person, and another 3 joined online.
Members of the Lee-Campbell group will be presenting 8 papers and participating as co-authors in 2 papers presented by others in 9 sessions at the Social Science History Association meetings in Chicago this November. Group members are also participating in an Author-Meets-Critics session. Below is a current schedule based on the SSHA preliminary program.
Thursday, November 21 / 9:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Session 5
EAP and beyond
Clark 5 – Floor 7
Chair: James Z. Lee, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Thursday, November 21 / 1:45 PM – 3:15 PM
Session 45
Education, Discrimination and Social Stratification
LaSalle 1 (Floor 7)
Friday, November 22 / 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Session 78
Big Data in Historical Research
Grant Park Parlor (Floor 6)
Friday, November 22 / 10:45 AM – 12:15 PM
Session 95
Big Data in Historical Research II
Grant Park Parlor (Floor 6)
Friday, November 22 / 1:15 PM – 2:45 PM
Session 111
Fertility Change, Timing, and Marriage
Clark 5 (Floor 7)
Friday, November 22 / 1:15 PM – 2:45 PM
Session 113
Development of Longitudinal Historical Data
Grand Park Parlor (Floor 6)
Friday, November 22 / 4:45 PM – 6:15 PM
Session 152
Different Beginnings-Comparative Perspectives on Early Tertiary Education
LaSalle 1 (Floor 7)
Saturday, November 23 / 10:45 AM – 12:15 PM
Session 183
Roles of Kinship: Demographic Outcomes and Methodology
Clark 5 (Floor 7)
Saturday, November 23 / 10:45 AM – 12:15 PM
Session 193
Author Meets Critics, Taisu Zhang, 2017. the Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property in Preindustrial China and England. Cambridge University Press
Dearborn 2 (Floor 7)
Chair: James Z. Lee, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Discussant: Shuang Chen, University of Iowa
Discussant: James Z. Lee, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Sunday, November 24 / 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Session 239
Political Economy and the Chinese State
Grant Park Parlor (Floor 6)
Nine members of the Lee-Campbell group will be presenting a total of 10 papers in 9 different sessions at the Social Science History Association meetings in Phoenix, November 8-11, 2018. There will be papers from all of our projects, including Qing civil service careers, Republican higher education and employment, family and social change in mid-20th century China, and historical demography. Three members will be chairing or serving as discussant at sessions.
Thursday, November 08: 02:45 PM-04:45 PM
Session: Educational and Career Trajectories in Comparative Context
Primary Network: Education
Bamboo Ren, Chen Liang, James Lee. Female Tertiary Education in China and Women’s Entry in the Public Sphere 1905-1952.
Session: Inequalities
Primary Network: Economics
Shuang Chen. Institutional and socio-economic determinants of wealth accumulation and dissipation: A case in Northeast China, 1866-1912
Thursday, November 08: 05:00 PM-07:00 PM
Session: Family and Class under State Control: Taxation, Financialization, and Inequality
Primary Network: States and Society
Xiangning Li, Matt Noellert, Cameron Campbell, James Lee. Inequality, Political Mobilization, and Class Re-categorization in the Socialist Education Movement in North China, 1963 -1966 .
Session: Religious Boundaries, Diversity, and Change
Primary Network: Religion
Other Networks: Urban
Ji Li. Catholic Communities and Local Governance in Northeast China before 1949
Friday, November 09: 08:00 AM-10:00 AM
Session: The Making of the Chinese Society
Primary Network: Macro-Historical Dynamics
Other Networks: States and Society
James Lee, Chen Liang, Bamboo Ren. Social and Geographical Origins of University Students in China, 1905-1952.
Friday, November 09: 10:15 AM-12:15 PM
Session: Kinship Beyond the Household: Methodology
Primary Network: Family/Demography
Hao Dong. The Endogenous Shaping of Family Trees by Ancestral Traits: An Empirical Note to Multigenerational Research Methodology.
Saturday, November 10: 08:00 AM-10:00 AM
Session: Administrative and political careers
Primary Network: Economics
Other Networks: Macro-Historical Dynamics, Politic
Bijia Chen, Cameron Campbell, James Lee. Structural Inequality in the Civil Service in Late Imperial China.
Cameron Campbell, Bijia Chen, Heng Hu, James Lee. Careers of Local Officials in the Qing Civil Service.
Saturday, November 10: 10:15 AM-12:15 PM
Session: Kinship Beyond the Household: Spatial mobility and coresidence Primary Network: Family/Demography
Other Networks: Historical Geography and GIS
Matt Noellert, Xianging Li, Cameron Campbell, James Lee. Beyond the Household, the Village, and the Countryside: Kin Networks and Spatial Mobility in Revolutionary China, 1945-1965.
Saturday, November 10: 10:15 AM-12:15 PM
Session: Kinship Beyond the Household: Spatial mobility and coresidence Primary Network: Family/Demography
Other Networks: Historical Geography and GIS
Dong Hao is chair and discussant
Saturday, November 10: 01:00 PM-03:00 PM
Session: Kinship, gender and reproduction (Paper session — Complete)
Primary Network: Family/Demography
Cameron Campbell is chair and discussant.
Saturday, November 10: 03:15 PM-05:15 PM
Session: Kinship Beyond the Household: Adoption and in-law relations
Primary Network: Family/Demography
Satomi Kurosu, Hao Dong. Adoption as a Family Continuity Strategy in Early Modern Japan.
Shuang Chen is the discussant
We will be participating in a number of sessions at the Social Science History Association meetings in Montreal from November 2 to November 4. We have 9 papers on the program presenting new results from three of our projects. Also, there will be an author meets critics session for Shuang Chen’s new book from Stanford University Press State-Sponsored Inequality The Banner System and Social Stratification in Northeast China. James Lee and Cameron Campbell will be panelists on an author meets critics session for Richard von Glahn’s new book Economic History of China from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century.
The abstracts below are the original ones last winter. The papers have evolved somewhat.
Xiangning Li. Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in two North China Towns in the Mid-twentieth Century.
Making use of a novel source of data, China Siqing Social Class Dataset (CSSCD), this paper analyzes the effect of state intervention on occupational structure and intergenerational occupational mobility in two towns, located in Hebei and Shanxi respectively, during the mid-twentieth century. We investigate the effects of a series institutional changes and political campaigns (the Three Antis & Five Antis movements), the collectivization of commercial enterprises, Socialist Education Movement, and others. These took place after 1949 and altered the occupational structure and the labor market in urban society. Town-level cities like the ones we study, with mixed urban-rural populations, represent the lowest level in the official urban administrative hierarchy, and have been largely ignored by previous researchers. Therefore, based on detailed retrospective information on occupation from administrative data from two towns compiled between 1965 and 1966, this paper intends to shed new light on the socialist state and socialist fluidity and between inequality and mobility. First, this paper will characterize some basic feature of the changing occupational structure before and after the founding of PRC, comparing different time periods. Second, mobility table analysis will be used to examine the link between father’s occupation and son’s occupation. By further analyzing the effect of educational attainment on upward mobility, and how the family class labels (for the individual who has rural origins) intervened in the process of inter-generational occupational reproduction, this paper intends to re-assess the openness of the opportunity structure of urban Chinese society during the mid-twentieth century.
Matt Noellert, Long Xing, James Lee. Cleaning up Capitalism in the Chinese Countryside: A Study of 1960s Microdata.
Throughout the process of rural collectivization in the Peopleâs Republic of China, the government repeatedly sought to stem the development of capitalism in Chinese society. This paper examines the results of one of the most systematic attempts to identify and correct âcapitalist tendenciesâ â the social class registers recorded as part of the Four Cleanups campaign in the mid-1960s â to see whether or not government concerns about capitalism were justified. These registers record the detailed social, economic, and political histories of each household over the entire course of collectivization from before communist Land Reform in the 1940s to the Peopleâs Communes in the 1960s. We have currently entered these data for over 15,000 households into a new dataset, the China Siqing Social Class Dataset (CSSCD), and employ a sub-set of the data in this paper. We begin by analyzing changes in the family class background and personal class labels recorded for each adult individual, which suggest that there were significant shifts in social status over the course of collectivization. We then analyze changes in household property to gauge the extent to which classes or individuals were becoming more âcapitalistâ, in the sense of private accumulation and class differentiation. The results of this Four Cleanups campaign played an important role in shaping the subsequent and more well-known Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that began in 1966, and this paper provides one of the first systematic studies of rural Chinese society during this transitional period.
Ji Li. Rethinking Indigenization and Christianity in China: The Development of Catholicism in Northeast China Before 1952. (Li Ji has informed us that she will not be able to attend)
On October 22, 1951, Bishop André-Jean Vérineux, a missionary from the Mission Étrangères de Paris (MEP) and the last vicar apostolic of the Catholic Manchuria Mission, disembarked in Hong Kong. Together with five other missionaries, Vérineux and his colleagues were the last cohort of Catholic missionaries expelled from Shenyang, northeast China. Until then, the Catholic Church has been established in northeast China for more than a century since 1838 when Emmanuel-Jean-François Vérrolles became the first vicar apostolic of the newly founded Manchuria-Mongolia Mission. Based on my ten-year work on the development of Catholicism in northeast China before 1950s, this paper re-examines one of the key issues in the history of Christianity in China, namely, indigenization in terms of acculturation. It asks how to define indigenization in different historical periods and what indigenization means in different political contexts. Scholars of the field have argued that in the past four centuries, Christianity has in fact become an indigenous and resilient Chinese religion. However, other scholars, including myself, began to demonstrate that the nineteenth century has in fact witnessed the systematic development of a global Catholic Church in China. Relying on church records and missionary writings, this paper investigates the century-long development of Catholicism in northeast China and the creation and persistence of Catholic identity in a particular Catholic community. It argues that since the nineteenth century, the local religious identity was created, expressed, and persisted through institutionalized Catholic ritual performance; Christianity was indigenized in China essentially through the introduction of a globalized Catholic Church in the modern era.
Yunzhu Ren, Chen Liang, James Lee. Tertiary Education in Republican China: Comparing Professional and non-Professional Students in 27 Republican Chinese Universities
Chen Liang, Yuqian Wang, Yunzhu Ren, James Lee. Social and Geographical Origins of University Students in Republican Shanghai.
Cameron Campbell, Bijia Chen, Yuxue Ren, James Lee. Government employees in Qing China: career trajectories and geographic mobility, 1760-1911.
We will examine the interplay of geographic mobility and career trajectories among government employees in Qing China between 1760-1911. For geographic mobility, we will focus on circulation between posts in the central government in Beijing and posts in provinces and counties. We will examine how the characteristics of government employees shaped their chances of having an initial post in the central government in Beijing or out in the provinces or counties, and then how the location of initial and later posts interacted with employee characteristics to shape subsequent career trajectories. For this analysis, we will make use of a database of Qing government employees based on rosters published every three months until the end of the dynasty in 1911. Each roster lists between 13,000 and 15,000 officials. We currently have more than 1,054,657 records of 216,644 officials from 78 rosters, and anticipate having 1,800,000 on hand by November. While most of the rosters we have entered so far, by November we will also have rosters of military officials, and they will be incorporated into the analysis.
Lawrence Zhang, Bijia Chen, Cameron Campbell, James Lee. Ladders of Success in Late Imperial China: Careers of Office Purchasers and Exam Qualifiers in the Qing Civil Service.
The often-used phrase “Ladder of Success” describes the path for individuals during late imperial China to first pass through the civil service examination system and then become an official. However, what happened to these individuals who actually entered the civil service? Moreover, how did they fare against other kinds of new entrants in the civil service, especially those who purchased their positions in government? Using newly digitized data from the quarterly published jinshenlu, which are lists of concurrently serving officials in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) civil service, this paper seeks to compare the career trajectories of individuals who entered the civil service through the examination system with those who entered through purchase. By linking the jinshenlu data with lists of individuals who earned their examination degrees and those who bought their positions, it will show the differences in career patterns for these two groups of individuals who had different claims to office. Significantly, the additional information available in the list of buyers and the examination degree holders yields important information about the background of these individuals, and yields more granular analysis of the socioeconomic background of sub-groups of officials who may have had particular successes in the civil service. Preliminary results from this research show that the pathway to office, especially higher level office, was far more complex and multivariate than the literature commonly assumes. Success in the civil service examination was the end of one ladder, but it was only the beginning of another.
Author meets critics: State-Sponsored Inequality: The Banner System and Social Stratification, by Shuang Chen
This book explores the social economic processes of inequality in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century rural China. Drawing on uniquely rich source materials, Shuang Chen provides a comprehensive view of the creation of a social hierarchy wherein the state classified immigrants to the Chinese county of Shuangcheng into distinct categories, each associated with different land entitlements. The resulting patterns of wealth stratification and social hierarchy were then simultaneously challenged and reinforced by local people. The tensions built into the unequal land entitlements shaped the identities of immigrant groups, and this social hierarchy persisted even after the institution of unequal state entitlements was removed. State-Sponsored Inequality offers an in-depth understanding of the key factors that contribute to social stratification in agrarian societies. Moreover, it sheds light on the many parallels between the stratification system in nineteenth-century Shuangcheng and structural inequality in contemporary China.
For more information about the book, see the page at Stanford University Press: http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25365
Long Xing, Cameron Campbell, Matt Noellert, Xiangning Li, James Lee. Education, Class and Marriage in Rural Shanxi, China in the Mid-Twentieth Century.
This paper examines the consequences of political, economic and social change in mid-twentieth century China for patterns of assortative mating by both education and class. Traditionally in China, marriages were arranged by parents, and ideally matched families of similar socioeconomic status. However, the first law of the Peopleâs Republic of China was a new marriage law, passed in 1950, which promoted free choice and forbade arranged marriages and other interference by families in the marriage decisions of their children. We investigate the effects of this law and other changes on assortative mating in China by using novel administrative data compiled in rural Shanxi Province in North China in the mid-1960s, which records both the education and family class background of spouses. Our findings that patterns of assortative mating differed according to whether status was measured with class label or education complicate current pictures of assortative mating that rely solely on educational attainment. Furthermore, in comparing marriages before and after the 1949/50 divide, we also find that educational homogamy and female hypergamy increased in intensity, as did class homogamy.
James Lee and Cameron Campbell will be panelists in the author meets critics session for Economic History of China from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century, by Richard von Glahn.