Japanese Studies of Post-Opium War China: 1980

It is now several years since the great upheavals of the autumn of 1976, and China is fortifying its image as an "ordinary nation." Our understanding of China is confused because of the "realization" that in fact the People's Republic is a society that is lagging behind. There is a trend that can also be seen in the major changes afoot in the field of modern Chinese history. Since 1976 historical research has taken as its slogan "seek truth through facts" (shih-shih ch'iu-shih) and the "liberation of thought" (ssu-hsiang chieh-fang). [There has been a change] from an emphasis on the continuous upsurge of the past revolution - for example, the mass of studies (due to the tempetuous post -'49 struggles between lines) on the lack of organization and spontaneity of the Boxer Movement, which was then traced to the "ignorant" struggle of the peasantry-to an emphasis on the bourgeois development toward capitalism in China. Shake-ups of various kinds, now stimulating China's transformation, are occurring in our method of comprehending "modern" in our own studies of modern Chinese history. Modern Chinese historical research, which has long stood at the threshold, can now be said to be undergoing a great transformation.