In 1899, twenty-five-year-old Herbert Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry, were living in Tientsin, China, where he was the comanager of the Kaiping mines. It was there that Hoover first began to study Chinese language and history.

In 1907 Hoover helped Stanford University historian Payson Treat buy books about China, especially its history, and in 1913 Hoover donated six hundred such books, some very rare, to Stanford University. In 1919 Hoover’s interest in foreign affairs inspired him to establish the Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

After World War II with luck and good timing, Chinese and non-Chinese public servants, military officers, engineers, journalists, scholars, and the like began donating their private papers and other materials to the Hoover Institution, where they were to be preserved and made available to interested readers. The papers of T. V. Soong are one of many preeminent collections. Americans involved in China, such as General Albert Wedemeyer and General Joseph Stilwell, also donated their papers to the Hoover Archives.

In 2003 the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace signed an agreement with the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT), or Nationalist Party of the Republic of China (ROC), to help preserve the vast historical records held in that party’s archives in Taipei, Taiwan. As the longest-enduring political party in Asia, the KMT was China’s premier revolutionary party until it was defeated in 1949 by Communist Party forces and forced to relocate in Taiwan.

When Chinese in the United States and Taiwan, including the National Women’s League in Taipei, learned of the KMT-Hoover cooperative project, they too agreed to have their materials preserved in the archives. (The Soong family began donating its materials to the Hoover Institution Archives in 1973, followed by additional papers in April 1980 and again in the spring of 2004.)

Those donations helped create the Modern China Archives and Special Collections. These special collections are now being integrated with the China-related material accumulated since 1919. (Trade press materials, such as published vernacular Chinese books and serials, were transferred from the Hoover Archives to the Stanford University Libraries in 2002.)

Download The Modern China Archives and Special Collections

PDF format, 5MB, 26Pages.

Ramon H. Myers
Senior Fellow Emeritus, Hoover Institution and Consultant to Hoover Archives
Kuo Tai-chun
Research Fellow, Hoover Institution

The Hoover Institution’s Modern China Archives and Special Collections

The Hoover Archives collects three types of materials: First are gifts of private papers in perpetuity through deed of gift, such as the papers of T. V. Soong (mentioned above), an official in the National government from 1928 to 1949.

Second are private papers on loan to the archives (through deposit agreements with terminal dates), such as the diaries of Chiang Kaishek and Chiang Ching-kuo. Third are agreements to collaborate on the preservation of records outside the United States, such as the KMT-Hoover agreement to preserve that party’s archival materials in Taipei, Taiwan.

The historical documents being acquired by the Hoover Institution bring us into the inner world of Chinese and Taiwanese leadership thinking, including difficulties resolving their conflicting beliefs and why they chose conflict over peace.

In April 2004, T. V. Soong’s (Soong Tse-ven) family granted permission to the Hoover Archives to open nineteen file boxes that had been previously closed to the public. These new materials contain transcripts of high-level discussions between Soong and leaders of the Allies in Washington, D.C., between 1941 and 1944; more than five hundred telegrams between T. V. Soong and Chiang Kai-shek; and countless letters and memoranda between Soong and other individuals, both high and low. Also included is T. V. Soong’s private journal, which gives details of the Sian (Xian) incident, during which Soong and his youngest sister, May-ling Soong (Chiang Kai-shek’s wife), went to Sian in December 1936 to negotiate Chiang’s release from Chinese warlords and the Communists.

In December 2004 Elizabeth Chiang deposited in the Hoover Archives the handwritten diaries of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Chingkuo (father and son and former presidents of the ROC) until a suitable presidential library can be built in China. For the first time in Chinese history, we have a firsthand record of the most powerful individuals in government ruminating about their political life and the great events of their times. (These diaries are on loan for preservation purposes and must be screened prior to opening.)

The archives also has an agreement with Madame Cecilia Koo, chair of the National Women’s League of the Republic of China in Taipei, where Hoover will microfilm its documents and special materials. This remarkable organization, originally founded by Madame Chiang Kai-shek in 1934 and called the Women’s Committee of the New Life Movement, promoted women’s education and social reforms.

In 1950 Madame Chiang’s organization merged with the new Joint Women’s Association for Anti-Communism and Opposing the Soviet Union (Zhongguo Funiu Fangong Kang-Er Lianhehui). In 1996 this organization was renamed the National Women’s League of the Republic of China. The new organization not only promoted talented women but helped thousands of women describe their individual and family lives. Those writings thus document a history of Chinese women in a society that was making the transition from imperial rule to modernity.

In 2003, the Hoover Institution and the party archives section of the KMT signed an agreement whereby the Hoover Institution would microfilm the three million odd documents of the party archives, provide an original microfilm copy to the KMT, and retain a copy at the institution; both sides also agreed to digitize the records and make a copy available to readers. The KMT Archives contains records of the revolutionary struggles in the late nineteenth century against the Manchu dynasty and the rise of the KMT, including its struggle to unify and modernize China, culminating in the party’s defeat and subsequent move to Taiwan in 1949. KMT records during the next half century reveal how the party reinvented itself to build a productive market economy, establish an electoral democracy, and improve the lives of Taiwan’s people.

The materials mentioned above add to an already impressive collection of personal papers received in the past half century by the Hoover Archives, including those of Tang Fei, former premier of the ROC government and former commander of that country’s Ministry of Defense, and distinguished cabinet minister Wei Yung, many of whose papers describe the reforms that took place in the ROC government between 1984 and 1988. Other papers include those of Chang Chia-ngau, a banker, founder of the Bank of China, and public servant; Huang Fu, a KMT highlevel official; Wang Zuorong, economist and public servant; James Wei, senior journalist; Ruan Yicheng, secretary general of the KMT; and many others.

(To examine those collections, consult the reference archivist in the archives.) The creation of this core collection coincides with a growing scholarly interest, in both West and East, in understanding divided China, as China’s growing power and importance are challenging the U.S. government to cooperate in unprecedented ways with the People’s Republic of China. Great changes have also occurred within Taiwan, especially during the past fifteen years. Thus, in both Chinas, new forces are changing beliefs and institutions.

Thus, the salient question is, Can today’s leaders and elites in divided China resolve their differences and not repeat the tragedies of the twentieth century? To help answer that question, scholars and researchers can call on the Modern China Archives and Special Collections of the Hoover Institution Archives.

Visit The Modern China Archives and Special Collections Website

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University, is a public policy research center devoted to advanced study of politics, economics, and political economy—both domestic and foreign—as well as international affairs.

With its world-renowned group of scholars and ongoing programs of policy-oriented research, the Hoover Institution puts its accumulated knowledge to work as a prominent contributor to the world marketplace of ideas defining a free society.

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