About us
Goals and Principles
This site is dedicated to making accessible the key documents, films, blogs, and publications of a movement of Chinese people seeking to reclaim their country's history. Unlike official government or university archives, the China Unofficial Archives is open, free, and accessible to anyone from any walk of life. The site is fully bilingual in Chinese and English, the international language of scholarship. The site is based on the following principles：
Neutrality
We do not endorse items in our archive. Our goal is to make information available. We do not promote a specific agenda.
Accessibility
We believe that public domain books, magazines, and films should be widely available, and that there is an inherent value in making different voices heard.
Public Service
We are a publicly registered non-profit organization. We do not charge fees or accept advertising.
Necessity for an Unofficial Archive
Since its founding in 1921, the Chinese Communist Party has made control of history its top priority. This is because control of history is the chief way that the party legitimizes its right to rule China: in its telling, history brought the party to power, and history has determined that only the Communist Party can run China. Any other versions of events are forbidden.
The party promotes its version of history in two ways. One is to employ writers, videographers, and others who make museum exhibitions, write books and blogs, or film videos or full-length feature films. Most distort the Communist Party's role in Chinese history by glorifying its accomplishments and erasing its shortcomings. The party also seeks to control history by limiting access to official archives. These measures deprive alternative versions of history public space in China.
The China Unofficial Archive helps correct this imbalance. For decades, citizen historians have written or filmed their own versions of history. They offer a fuller and more nuanced version of history than Chinese Communist Party’s one-dimensional version of the past. The archive brings together these efforts--from the party's early days before 1949 to current events, such as the government's response to the Covid-19 pandemic. It allows users to sort the material by topic, era, creator, and format, giving users the chance to explore related materials.
The Team
The China Unofficial Archive is made up of an operational team that built and maintains the site, as well as an advisory board.
The daily operational team includes Ian Johnson, the archive’s founder, and other staff members who prefer to remain anonymous.
Our advisory board includes:
- Zha Jianying, a Chinese and American writer who is also on the archive’s board of directors.
- Guo Jian, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, and a prominent translator of citizen historians.
- Shao Jiang, a London-based historian, and author of the book Citizen Publications in China Before the Internet.
- Song Yongyi, professor emeritus at California State University, Los Angeles, and chief editor of the Database for the History of Contemporary Chinese Political Movements, a collection of nearly 40,000 documents from the Mao era.
- Professional archivists in several countries, including China, who prefer to remain anonymous.