China and the Cold War: Introduction

Despite problems with archival access and numerous other obstacles, the field of Cold War studies in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has expanded greatly in recent years. Scholars of the Cold War have received generous research funding and have increasingly traveled abroad to do research in other countries’ archives and to participate in international conferences. Since 2010, several new Chinese centers dealing with the history of the Cold War have been established. To familiarize Western scholars with some of the best Cold War scholarship now being produced by Chinese scholars, I have worked with the Journal of Cold War Studies to put out this special issue on “China and the Cold War.” It features six articles from junior and mid-career scholars whose work is representative of the most innovative and illuminating research on the topic by scholars from China.