Home > Research Guides > Digital Resources for Chinese Studies

5. News and Newspapers

• Digital Indexes
• Full Text
• News Sites
• Finding Newspapers at Harvard and Beyond

While some of these resources are open to the world, many require a Harvard ID and PIN. See individual entries for access information.

Digital Indexes

National Index to Chinese Newspapers & Periodicals 全国报刊索引 (Harvard ID/PIN required)
Coverage: 1857 to present
Citation index for mainland Chinese newspapers and journals from the mid-nineteenth century on, created by the Shanghai Library 上海图书馆. For more information, please see the entry in the Journals section.

Newspapers in Taiwan 新聞知識庫 (Harvard ID/PIN required)
Provides searching of headlines and clipped text excerpts for the following newspapers: 聯合報, 聯合報(地方版), 中國時報, 經濟日報, 工商時報, 自由時報, 聯合晚報, 民生報, 蘋果日報, 自立早報, 中央日報, 星報, 聯統時報, and 台灣新聞. Coverage varies by newspaper.

Full text searching and text is available for 聯合報,聯合晚報,經濟日報 and民生報 from 2002 to the present. Full text for the historical 中央日報 (1928-1949) is also available. 

Results may be downloaded, printed, or emailed.

Technical Requirements: Input must be in traditional characters. Firefox is the preferred browser.

Electronic Index to the Early Shenbao 申報 (1872-1898)
"The index includes all leading articles from the Shenbao itself, as well as the articles reprinted from Hong Kong papers, above all those from the early Xunhuan Ribao 循環日報 (i.e. 1874 to 1879) edited by Wang Tao, which are not preserved otherwise. The selection of other items, such as news reports, official documents, letters to the editor, etc. is based on their length and perceived importance for ongoing debates. Only very little of the poetry is included. Not indexed are the contents of the Shenbao reprints of the Jingbao 京報 (Peking Gazette) as well as of advertisements."

CD-ROM Materials
For searching and some full-text of mainland newspapers, please see the following CD-ROM resources on the Journals and Journal Indexes page:

• Zhongguo ren min da xue shu bao zi liao zhong xin fu yin bao kan zi liao quan wen shu ju guang pan 中国人民大学书报资料中心复印报刊资料全文数据光盘
• Zhongguo ren min da xue shu bao zi liao zhong xin fu yin bao kan zi liao suo yin 中国人民大学书报资料中心复印报刊资料索引
• Quan guo bao kan suo yin shu ju ku 全国报刊索引数据库

Full text

China Core Newspapers 中国重要报纸全文数据库 (Harvard ID/PIN required)
Coverage: 2000–present
Click on IP Login in the top left-hand corner to access the Harvard-subscribed databases if you are asked for login .
Includes the full-text electronic versions of over 600 Chinese national, regional, and local newspapers or periodicals that appear at least on a weekly basis. Title lists are available under "General Newspapers CCND-GEN." Special newspapers relate to legal issues in China, the environment, foreign policy, literary production, economics and finance, education and various areas of science and technology.

China Core Newspapers and Refworks: Please see the description under China Academic Journals.

Technical requirements: Searching is with simplified characters 简体字. Full text may be downloaded using Acrobat Reader with Adobe simplified Chinese fonts or with the CAJ Viewer. Please note that the CAJ Viewer now allows you to search within the downloaded texts. Citations may also be downloaded and saved. PC- and Mac-compatible.

For information on using Refworks with CCND, see the China Academic Journals entry.

People's Daily 人民日报 1946–2006 电子版 (Harvard ID/PIN required)
Coverage: 1946-2006
Online version of the major state newspaper of the People's Republic of China. Provides browsing by date, full text searching, full text of articles, and full-image reproductions of the original newspapers. Citations may also be imported into Refworks.

Access:The current subscription is for two simultaneous users. If two people are already using the database, you will not be able to log on. Please let Xiao-he Ma know if you frequently experience problems accessing this resource.

Searching: Searching may be done with simplified 简体字 or traditional 繁體字 characters. Full text articles will display only in simplified characters, however, even where the original article was written in traditional characters.

Full text: Full text display is article by article and requires no special installations.

Full image: Full-image reproductions of the entire day's paper (not specific articles) are available in pdf format under 正文. In the libraries, the full-image pdf files are accessible only on the Chinese research workstation in the Harvard-Yenching Library reading room. Please note that Adobe Acrobat 7.0.0 - 7.0.4 does not work with this database; Acrobat 7.0.5 and above will work if a patch is installed (see below).

To be able to download and view these pdfs on your own computer, please go to ftp://ftp.twinbridge.com/Public/PDSetup/ and click on the appropriate version of Acrobat for your computer. Instructions in English and Chinese are given. For Acrobat Reader 7.0.5 or above, please uncheck the "Display PDF in browser" function under Preferences in Acrobat. If you experience font display problems with Acrobat Reader 8, try installing the Simplified Chinese font support from the Adobe website.

Newspapers in Taiwan 新聞知識庫 (Harvard ID/PIN required)
Full text searching and text is available for 聯合報,聯合晚報,經濟日報 and民生報 from 2002 to the present. Full text for the historical 中央日報 (1928-1949) is also available. For more information, see the entry above under Digital Indexes.

Factiva.com (Harvard ID/PIN required)
General news database oriented especially towards financial news. Factiva includes many newspapers published in Asia. Although many of these are Western-language publications, the database is increasingly including East Asian-language newspapers.

To see a list of Chinese publications in Factiva.com, try the following:

1. Click on Source.
2. From the Select Source Category drop-down menu, choose Publications - By Region (you may view by language by choosing Publications - By Language).
3. Click on the + icon next to Asia.
4. Click on the + icon next to Eastern Asian Countries.
5. Click on the + icon next to China or Hong Kong or Taiwan.

Lexis-Nexis Academic (Harvard ID/PIN required)
Lexis-Nexis Academic provides searching and text of many Western-language publications from East Asia.

To see a list of Chinese publications in Lexis-Nexis Academic, try the following:

1. Choose World News from the Step One: Select a news category drop-down menu.
2. Choose Asia/Pacific News Sources the Step Two: select a news source drop-down menu.
3. Click on Source List to see browse titles from that area.
4. Click on About This Title to see information about how often holdings are updated and what is included in the subscription.

World News Connection (Harvard ID/PIN required)
Coverage: June 1994 - present
World News Connection provides online access to full text English translations of current non-U.S. media sources, including China and Taiwan. The material is obtained from non-U.S. open-source political speeches, television programs, radio broadcasts, newspaper articles, periodicals, and books. It focuses primarily on military, political, environmental, scientific, technical, and socioeconomic issues and events. Coverage for earlier years, along with relevant indexes, are available (mostly in microform) for FBIS (1941-) and JPRS (1957-) in Government Documents/Microforms in Lamont. Using the indexes can be challenging, so you may wish to set up an appointment with reference staff (617-495-2479).

Ethnic Newswatch (Harvard ID/PIN required)
Full-text database of the newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press in the United States. These include several English-language, Asian-American publications.

To browse a list of publications in Ethnic Newswatch:

1. Click on the Publications tab.
2. Enter a search term (e.g. China, Asia* - the asterisk lets you search for different forms of the word) to search the list of titles.
3. Alternately, you may browse by letter.

CD-ROM Materials
The following CD-ROMs may be used on the Chinese research workstation in the Harvard-Yenching Library reading room. Please request them at the circulation or reference desk by call number.

Jie fang jun bao 解放軍報光盘全文捡索系统
Coverage 1956 - 2000.
Harvard-Yenching Library (C) CD-ROM C-0038
Searching and full text. Search results and text may be printed or saved.

People's Daily 人民日报: 五十年图文数据系列光盘
Coveage: 1946 - 2003
Harvard-Yenching Library: (C) CD-ROM C-0039
Searching and full text of the major state newspaper of the PRC. Search results and text may be printed or saved.

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News Sites

The following is a selected list of Chinese-language newspapers and news sites provided for the convenience of users. It is not intended to be comprehensive, nor does it reflect an endorsement of any particular news providers.

The library does not subscribe to these online newspapers, so past issues are generally not available except where noted. Encoding for each site is indicated.

J B News 京报网
Online editions of Beijing Ri bao 北京日报, Beijing Wan bao 北京晚报, Bei jiao ri bao 京郊日报, Chen bao 晨报, Xin bao 信报, Shang bao 商报, Jing bao 竞报, Shou du jian she bao 首都建设报 Beijing she hui bao 北京社会报, Beijing zhi bu sheng huo 北京支部生活, Xin wen yu xie zuo 新闻与写作, Da xue sheng za zhi 大学生杂志, and Tong xin chu ban she 同心出版社. (GB)

China News Digest WWW Server (includes 華夏文摘)
Excerpts from and commentary on news from China and on China-related issues. Service is provided by volunteers, and views and analysis are theirs. Some translations into English are available, and past issues of 華夏文摘 are archived. (GB)

China Times 中時電子報
Taiwan daily netnews site. (Big5)

Da gong bao 大公報
Hong Kong daily netnews site. (Big5/GB)

Duo wei xin wen wang 多維新聞網
China-related news provided by a company based in Canada, the US and Hong Kong. (Big5/GB)

Guangming Daily 光明日報
Online site for the newspaper. Includes links to a wide range of other regionally-based news sites in China (GB)

Lian he Zao bao wang 联合早报网
Daily news site from Singapore (GB)

Ming Pao Daily News, Hong Kong 明報
Hong Kong daily netnews site. (Big5)

People’s Daily 人民日報
Official P.R.C. netnews site. Includes links to the People's Daily, People's Daily Overseas Edition, etc. Also provides searching of and access to text archives of the People's Daily and a number of other newspapers and magazines from 2000 on; click on 分类检索 at the top of the page to find this function. Links to multi-lingual editions include Big 5, English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic. (GB)

Sina 新浪網
One of the most popular news sites in China. There are also Taiwan, Hong Kong, and North America versions.

Sing Tao Electronic Daily, Hong Kong 星島日報
With links to the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia editions.(Big 5)

So hu xin wen 搜狐新聞
Presents news stories collected from a variety of PRC sources. (GB)

United Daily News 聯合報
Taiwan daily netnews site. (Big 5)

Wen xin mei ti wang文新传媒网
P.R.C. netnews site. Provides online news from newspapers associated with the Wen hui 文汇 publishing group, including 文汇报, 新民晚报, 东方早报, Shanghai Daily上海日报, 东方体育报, 行报, 上海星期三,上海家庭报, 文汇读书周报, 文学报, 外滩画报, 新闻记者, 新民周刊, 今日上海, 上海滩, 新读写, and 萌芽. (GB)

World Journal 世界日報
Chinese-American newspaper. Also provides an English-language version. (Big 5)

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Finding Chinese newspapers at Harvard and beyond

For general information about the best ways to search for newspapers in HOLLIS and elsewhere, please see the Guide to Newspapers and Newspaper Indexes.

Chinese-language newspapers at Harvard are primarily held by Harvard-Yenching Library, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies Collection of the Fung Library, and the Law Library. To see a list of many of these newspapers in HOLLIS, try running this search:

HOLLIS list of Chinese-language newspapers

Please note that this does not include all holdings, especially those which have been reprinted in book format. To search more broadly, try variations on the following strategy:

1. Go to the Journal Titles tab in HOLLIS.
2. Choose Expanded Search.
3. Enter newspaper-related terms for "Keyword Anywhere" searches, such as "xin wen" OR 新闻 OR 新聞.
4. Limit language to Chinese, or place of publication to a Chinese city (e.g. Guangdong or 广东 or 廣東).
5. Click on Search.

For more information on newspapers held by Harvard-Yenching, please contact the reference desk.

Other News Sources at Harvard
Widener Library also collects newspapers published in Asia, primarily those published in Western-languages. You can search their newspaper holdings on microfilm by city and country of publication.

For English-language translations of news reports from China and other foreign countries, please see the World News Connection entry above.

The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies Collection of the Fung Library provides a list of currently subscribed periodicals, including newspapers, on its website.

Newspapers Beyond Harvard
Center for Research Libraries (CRL) - Foreign Newspapers
Center for Research Libraries (CRL) - U. S. Ethnic Newspapers
The Center for Research Libraries collects a range of foreign and U. S. ethnic newspapers on microfilm. Affiliates of member libraries may borrow these films through Interlibrary Loan. Their website allows you to search for lists of publications by a variety of criteria, including language, region or ethnic group. Searching is in romanization only.