The Dustbin of History: Making Archives in Modern China

Abstract

For nearly a century, scholars of China have used discarded government papers, often peddled at flea markets outside the law, to peel away the country’s secrecy. Even till today, these “garbage materials” have spawned archival collections and academic careers, but little understood is their provenance and circulation, let alone their enduring impact on Chinese history and historiography. This dissertation examines the social history of information in twentieth-century China by focusing on the afterlives of its official archives. From sold-off papers of the Qing Empire to remnants of the Mao era, this study examines bureaucratic governance as a material practice. Through an economy of paper reuse, the most marginalized members of society, such as waste recyclers, were connected to the highest echelon of power. Combining archival research and ethnographic fieldwork, this project highlights the enduring role of grassroots collections in shaping historical knowledge and memory in China. Beyond contributing to intellectual and social histories of modern China, this study is also an ethnography of the state. As much as paperwork was key to the creation of bureaucratic knowledge, it co-existed uneasily with demands of the mass line in Mao’s China. Tracing the Chinese Communist Party’s transformation from an underground organization to a ruling regime, this dissertation explores the tension between bureaucratic governance and mass mobilization. Archival leaks were more than breaches of official secrecy; they constituted informal channels of political communication inside a fragmented organization and allowed for popular participation in state violence. Finally, this project examines China as a key player in the global history of big data. From the Dewey Decimal System to Soviet archival methods to mass digitization, successive Chinese governments have experimented with various information technologies to manage growing volumes of records. In the reverse direction, this study uses computational tools to survey China’s archival landscape and to reverse its algorithms of censorship. Bridging book history, history of science, and digital humanities, it raises urgent questions about the definition of archive, the meaning of preservation and destruction, and the processes and possibilities of historical knowledge production.