In David Shambaugh’s review of The Conscience of the Party: Hu Yaobang, China’s Communist Reformer by Robert Suettinger (Harvard UP, 2024), I found this interesting bit on archival research:
His extensive trawling on the Chinese internet reveals just how much can now be accessed outside of China, and why scholars need not necessarily travel to China to research it. In many ways, the situation of China studies today — under the strict controls and censorship imposed by Xi — is similar to that of the 1950s and 1960s, when the country was closed to foreign researchers altogether. At least today, as Suettinger’s study demonstrates, researchers can mine the Chinese internet and social media, as well as its electronic databases. Much printed material is available in libraries and private collections outside of China. Suettinger only went on one research trip to China, where he visited Hu’s tomb at Fuhua mountain in Jiangxi province.