Modern Chinese history studies in contemporary times

ABSTRACT After the People’s Republic of China was founded, a system of Marxist historiography was soon established in modern Chinese history studies. Researchers began to conduct a systematic collection of historical records and made outstanding achievements in many fields of study. During the Cultural Revolution, academic research was brought to a standstill: there were few publications in modern history studies. When the country entered a period of reform and opening-up in 1978, modern Chinese history studies witnessed unprecedented prosperity: there was a breakthrough in the single-line narration of political and revolutionary history and in the use of a single theoretical methodology. Researchers have made outstanding achievements and developed modern Chinese history studies into a mature subdiscipline of historiography.