Tag: james lee

Emma Zang and James Lee Publish an Article in Sociology on Family Background and Students’ Fields of Study

An article by Emma Zang, Yining Milly Yang, and James Lee on how the family background affects students’ fields of study across different historical periods in China has been published in Sociology. Emma Zang was one of our group alumni who earned her MPhil in Social Science from HKUST in 2014 and is now an assistant professor at Yale University. Congratulations to Emma Zang and James Lee!

Here is the abstract of the article:

How family background affects students’ fields of study across different historical periods in China is not well studied. Post 1949, China explicitly prioritized specific industrial sectors when allocating resources, creating an especially strong reason to expect that the industrial sector in which a parent was employed might strongly influence a child’s educational outcomes and career aspirations. Using data from the school registration records of 51,801 students who entered an elite regional university from 1952 through 2002, this study is the first to examine the role of parents’ industrial sectors in predicting children’s fields of study and the temporal patterns of this association. Applying multinomial logistic regression and the log-multiplicative layer effect model, we found that parents’ industrial sectors predicted children’s fields of study independent of parents’ broad categories of occupation. The strength of the association was particularly strong during the Cultural Revolution and post-market transition periods.

Here is the link to the full text:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00380385241242044.

Zang, E., Yang, Y. M., & Lee, J. Z. (2024). Parents’ Industrial Sectors and Fields of Study: Five Decades of Evidence from an Elite Regional University in China. Sociology, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00380385241242044

Liang Chen and James Lee Publish an Article in 中国社会科学 on Female University Students in Republican-era China

Chen Liang (梁晨) and James Z. Lee (李中清) published an article 《社会转型与中国近代女大学生的教育样态》 in 《中国社会科学》(Social Sciences in China) on the female university students in Republican-era China using the CUSD-ROC databases.

Here is the abstract in Chinese and English:

在近代社会转型背景之下，中国女大学生的教育环境和教育选择既与传统中国女性迥异，也与欧美不尽相同。一方面，随着女禁解除,男女同校的教育形式被中国高校普遍采纳，高校女大学生的制度环境较为宽松；另一方面，女大学生的社会来源和地理分布较男生更为集中，女子进入高等教育的门槛明显高于男生，在看似相对宽松的教育环境背后隐藏着更难逾越的阶层限制。大学之门平等向女性开放，是新中国成立后才逐渐发展形成的。这不仅有助于推进近代中国女性教育研究，也为理解全球近代女性平等的发展历程提供了中国经验。

One of the most radical and important social changes in the twentieth century is the opening of tertiary education to women. This article uses the China University Student Dataset-Republic of China (CUSD-ROC) and related education statistics in the Republican period, to understand better the early history of female tertiary education in China. By analyzing and contrasting student spatial and social origins by gender as well as different gender preferences for student majors, we demonstrate that many features of female education in Republican China differ from China in the past and elsewhere in. the world.

关键词：社会转型 女大学生 社会来源 量化历史

Keywords: Female university students, spatial origins, social origins, major selection, quantitative history

Full reference: 梁晨, 李中清. 社会转型与中国近代女大学生的教育样态. 《中国社会科学》2024年第6期, 162-183.

Here is the link to the full text:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/wRdxMdqCWnVGuw7N8nR7WA

We sincerely thank Bamboo Ren for her help with the writing!

New 大数据与中国历史 Chinese translation of Cameron Campbell’s and James Lee’s 40 year career retrospective is now available

The 4th edition of the annual 大数据与中国历史 (Big Data and Chinese History), edited by Fu Haiyan at Central China Normal University, is out now from 社会科学文献出版社 (Social Science Documents Publishing House). It includes a Chinese translation of my and James Lee’s career retrospective, summarizing our work over the last four decades constructing and analyzing historical population and other databases for China.

The full text is available here.

Here is a link to the volume’s page at Dangdang in case you want to order:

http://product.dangdang.com/29580832.html

The English language original of our retrospective is available here: https://hlcs.nl/article/view/9303

Here is the complete reference for the Chinese language translation:

康文林 (Cameron Campbell)，李中清 (James Lee). 2023. 中国历史量化微观大数据：李中清-康文林团队40 年学术回顾 in 付海晏 Ed. 大数据与中国历史研究. 第4辑. Beijing:社会科学文献出版社 Social Sciences Academic Press (China), 74-114.

James Lee, Bamboo Ren, and Chen Liang Publish an Updated Version of their 2020 China Quarterly Article “Meritocracy and the Making of the Chinese Academe, 1912-1952”

Cover of Khanna and Szonyi’s edited volume Making Meritocracy

 

In “Meritocracy and the Making of the Chinese Academe Redux, 1912-1952”, a chapter in the new Oxford University Press volume edited by Michael Szonyi and Tarun Khanna Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from antiquity to the present, James Lee, Bamboo Y. Ren, and Chen Liang update the figures, maps, tables and related text from their earlier China Quarterly article to include domestic student data from five additional Chinese universities as well as data on many more overseas Chinese students from foreign universities.

Web page for Making Meritocracy at Oxford University Press

Full reference:

Lee, James, Bamboo Y. Ren, and Chen Liang. 2022. Meritocracy and the Making of the Chinese Academe Redux, 1912-1952. In Michael Szonyi and Tarun Khanna, eds. Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India. Oxford University Press, 137-169.

HKUST colleague Lawrence Zhang contributed a chapter to the same volume:

Sheth, Sudev and and Lawrence L. C. Zhang. 2022. “Meritocracy in Early Modern Asia: Qing China and Mughal India.”  In Michael Szonyi and Tarun Khanna. Eds. 2022. Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 85-117.

 

Chinese Translation of Campbell’s and Lee’s Historical Chinese Microdata: 40 Years of Dataset Construction by the Lee-Campbell Research Group

A Chinese translation of Cameron Campbell’s and James Lee’s Historical Life Course Studies paper “Historical Chinese Microdata. 40 Years of Dataset Construction by the Lee-Campbell Research Group” is forthcoming in a volume of Big Data and the Study of Chinese History 大数据与中国历史研究. The title of the translation is 中国历史量化微观大数据：李中清–康文林团队40年学术回顾. This paper reviews all of our projects since 1979, including construction of datasets and the study of topics in population, family, and social mobility. Pending the appearance of the volume, we are making a PDF of the translation available.

Here is the PDF of the Chinese translation of Historical Chinese Microdata. 40 Years of Dataset Construction by the Lee-Campbell Research Group.

Here is the English language original, in case you missed it.

 

Bamboo Ren, Chen Liang, and James Lee publish new article in China Quarterly on “Meritocracy and the Making of the Chinese Academe, 1912-1952” using the CUSD-ROC, CUSD-OS, and CPOD-UE

This article takes advantage of three new big historical datasets to identify four salient features of the Chinese academe during the Republic of China. First, it was highly international in terms of training. Second, the proportion of female students was unexpectedly large. Third, there was a heavy emphasis on STEM subjects. Finally, the social and spatial origins of China’s university students and university faculty members changed from a national population of civil servant families to business and professional families largely from Jiangnan and the Pearl River Delta. The datasets are the China University Student Dataset – Republic of China, which includes almost half of all students to graduate from a Chinese university during the first half of the 20th century; the China University Student Dataset – Overseas, which includes the vast majority of all Chinese students to graduate from an North American, European or Japanese university during this same period; and the China Professional Occupation – University Employee Dataset, which includes almost all university faculty members in China, 1941–1950. The China University Student Datasets are described in detail here.

Here is a link to the paper at the China Quarterly page:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/article/meritocracy-and-the-making-of-the-chinese-academe-19121952/91FDD1422C31D5CA8119F14BD2AD1162

 

<民国上海大学生社会来源量化研究，1913-1949> wins a prize

As part of their 2020 biennial competition, the Jiangsu academe awarded Chen Liang, Bamboo Yunzhu Ren, Yuqian Wang, James Z. Lee,  2017, <民国上海大学生社会来源量化研究，1913-1949>,  《历史研究》(Historical Research) 第三期 (May): 76-92,  a second prize (二等奖) for Outstanding Achievement in Philosophy and Social Science. This is the third publication by the Lee-Campbell Group to receive such recognition from the Jiangsu academe.  For full text please follow this link.

Here is the official announcement.

 

PRC Ministry of Education awards Lee-Campbell Group article an Excellent Research Achievement Award

The Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China awarded Chen Liang, Hao Dong, James Z. Lee, 2015,  <量化数据库与历史研究> (Big Historical Data and New Directions in Historical Research) 《历史研究》(Historical Research). Vol 2 (April 2015): 113-128 a 优秀青年成果奖 (Excellent Young Scholar Research Achievement Prize). This is the eighth triennial Excellent Research Achievement Award competition and the first to distinguish young scholars, below age 40, from more senior scholars.  Altogether 11 history publications, including nine books and only two articles, received this recognition.

Here is the official announcement at the PRC Ministry of Education website.

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 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.