World Wide Diplomatic Archives Index: China
Legislation
According to legislation passed in 1980, foreign relations documents (along with other historical materials) for all of Chinese history up to 1949 were to be made available to the public and researchers. According to an Archive Law of 1987, diplomatic and other archives are to become open after 30 years.
Location
Post-1949: Foreign Ministry Archives, No. 2, Chaoyangmen Nandajie, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100701
1912-1949: Second Historical Archives, 309 East Zhongshan Road, Nanjing, 210016
Pre-1912: First Historical Archives, National Palace Museum, Xihuamennei, Beijing, 100031
Procedures
These vary from archive to archive, but generally speaking no prior contact with the archives is needed, and an application can be filled out upon arrival. A letter from your home institution is usually sufficient to gain access to the First and Second Historical Archives, but a letter from a Chinese institution is required for access to the Foreign Ministry Archives (and would help at the others as well). At least one form of official identification is also required. There are finding aids, and there is no blanket fee to access the collection. However, at the Foreign Ministry Archives, where everything that can be viewed has been digitized, there is a cost to view each page.
Published Documents
A collection of documents relating to China’s relations with Western nations prior to 1911 was published in the 1930s, under the title of Collection of Documents on the Management of Foreign Matters (Chouban yiwu shimo), and beginning in the 1950s the PRC Government began publishing collections of documents relating to particular episodes in its foreign relations. Since 1981, the First and Second Historical Archives have issued several journals that publish small collections of documents along with scholarly essays, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has done the same.