List of Influential Works Based Wholly or Partly on USC’s Archival Materials

The USC’s archives are widely considered to be a treasure to China scholars from around the world.  This is extolled by the leading journal the China Journal in its January 2016 Special Issue which paid tribute to the USC for its important contribution to the field.  To show its value to China scholars, we are citing 15 publications that have made notable use of the USC’s collection.  Space and time only allow us to show the more important works published in the last decade.  Based wholly or partly on archival studies at the USC, these books were written by outstanding scholars and published by the most prestigious publishers of the world. They cover a wide range of topics, including history, governance, reforms, social changes, international relations, Cultural Revolution, Communist Party, Maoism, state making, political movement, to gender, etc.


Ezra F. VOGEL, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus, Harvard University

Former chair of the USC Advisory Committee

Ezra F. VOGEL, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 2011



Deborah S. Davis, Professor of Sociology, Yale University

Director of Academic Programs at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

Chair of the Department of Sociology

Chair of the Council of East Asian Studies

Director of Graduate Studies in both East Asian Studies and Sociology

Vice-president of the Board of Trustees of the Yale-China Association

Chair of the USC Advisory Committee

Sara L. Friedman, Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Anthropology,  Indiana University

Deborah S. Davis and Sara L. Friedman, Wives, Husbands, and Lovers: Marriage and Sexuality in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Urban China.  Stanford University Press; 2014


Roderick MacFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Research Professor of History and Political Science, Harvard University

Roderick MacFarquhar, Mao's Last Revolution. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 2006


Andrew G. Walder, Denise O'Leary & Kent Thiry Professor, Stanford University

Director-Emeritus, Division of International, Comparative, and Area Studies, School of Humanities and Science

Director-Emeritus, Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC)

Member of the USC Advisory Committee

Andrew G. Walder, China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; 2015

Andrew G. Walder, Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; 2009


David Shambaugh, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University

David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power. Oxford University Press; 2013


Jonathan Unger, Professor of Sociology, Australian National University

Founding editor of The China Journal

Member of the USC Advisory Committee

Richard Madsen, Professor of Sociology, University of California, San Diego

Director of FUDAN-UC Centre

Anita Chan, Research Professor at the China Research Centre of the University of Technology, Sydney

Visiting Fellow of the Political and Social Change Department, Australian National University

Anita Chan, Richard Madsen, and Jonathan Unger, Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization. Berkeley: University of California Press; 2009


Kevin J. O’Brien, Professor of Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Walter and Elise Haas Professor of Asian Studies; Alann P. Bedford Professor of Asian Studies; Professor of Political Science & Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Lianjiang Li, Professor of Political Science, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2006


Pierre F. Landry, Professor of Political Science; Director of Global China Studies, New York University-Shanghai

Member of the USC Advisory Committee

Pierre F. Landry, Decentralized Authoritarianism in China: The Communist Party’s Control of Local Elites in the Post-Mao Era. Cambridge University Press; 2008


Jae Ho Chung, Professor of International Relations, Seoul National University

Director of the Program on US-China Relations

Former director of the Institute for China Studies

Founder of the Korean Association for Chinese Political Studies

Founding coordinator of the Asian Network for the Study of Local China

Member of the USC Advisory Committee

Jae Ho Chung, Centrifugal Empire: The Anatomy of Central-Local Relations in China. Columbia University Press; forthcoming

Jae Ho Chung, Between Ally and Partner: Korea-China Relations and the United States. Columbia University Press; 2007


Patricia M. Thornton, Associate Professor in the Politics of China, University of Oxford

Patricia M. Thornton, Disciplining the State: Virtue, Violence and State-making in Modern China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; 2007


Yang Su, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine

Yang Su, Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution. Cambridge University Press; 2011

(2012 ASA Barrington Moore Award for Best Book in Comparative and Historical Sociology (Winner))

(2012 ASA Charles Tilly Award for Best Book in Studies of Collective Behavior and Social Movements (Honorable Mention))

Edward Friedman, Professor emeritus of political science,  University of Wisconsin-Madison

Paul G. Pickowicz, Professor of History and Chinese Studies, University of California, San Diego

Mark Selden, Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program, Cornell University

Emeritus Professor of History and Sociology, Binghamton University

Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark Selden, Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China. Yale University Press; 2007


Minxin Pei, Professor of Government,  Claremont McKenna College

Director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies

Minxin Pei, China's Trapped Transition: The limits of developmental autocracy. Harvard University Press; 2008