I convened 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 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.
In addition to the presenters, other faculty and scholars 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.
Opening
Introductory Remarks by Chen Zhiwu, Cameron Campbell
Session 1 – New Approaches
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
Session 2 – Geographic, Economic, and Other Context
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
Session 3 – Late Imperial China I
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
Session 4 – Late Imperial China II
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
Session 5 – ROC
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
Session 6 – ROC and PRC
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
Future Directions
Panel with opening remarks by Cameron Campbell, Zhiwu Chen, Christian Henriot, and James Z. Lee
Participant Roster
| 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 |
| Kan | Hongliu | 阚红柳 |
| Kang | Wanying | 康婉盈 |
| 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 |