China Studies   Tags: school resources  

The history of China has been said to be a great enigma, covering over 5,000 years from the ancient past to the present. Much academic debate over China has centred on how a country as massive and as diverse in language and population has endured as a single political polity. Another debate is on whether China is a “benign giant”, and will remain so, or will she pose a danger to the world community, especially her Asian neighbours, as she becomes even more powerful. There are even views that perhaps the extreme speed at which its economy is growing may bring about instability in the country, if not accompanied by a comparable level of development in its political situation and improvement in economic distribution. Certainly, the rise of China is an interesting topic worth further and deeper research. This libguide is not meant to be a comprehensive resource on the academic study of China. Rather, it aims to point to resources on major aspects impacting on the emergence of China as a world power, and is divided into four sections, covering the four themes:

• Culture and Society
• Authority and Governance
• Development and Challenges
• China and the World

Books and texts are often mainstays of resource guides as these provide introductory and comprehensive information on a particular topic. In the creation of this libguide however, effort was also made to recommend resources that are highly accessible, such as, ebooks, journal and newpaper articles, authoritative websites, among others. Please find below a brief write-up of the resource formats, as well as, how to access them.

• Print materials from both the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, as well as, NLB's Public Libraries. Just click on the given links to activate NLB's online catalogue showing availability of the items. Apart for the reference books at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, books recommended in this guide can be reserved online and brought to the library branch of your choice for a small fee of $1.55 (just click on "Reserve this item").
  
  
• Journal Articles from the library's eResources service (http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg). Most of the recommended journal articles are from Proquest Central and JSTOR as these databases are accessible from home. Just click on the given links to be brought to the relevant section of the eResources site. Thereafter, register (if you are new to the service) or log-in >> click on the relevant database (e.g., JSTOR, Proquest Central) >> conduct a search using the article's title.
  
  
• Newspaper articles from the Factiva database, as well as, the NewspaperSG database. Factiva is available via our eResources service and articles within can be accessed in the same manner as that for journal articles (described above). Newspapers from NewspaperSG can be accessed via (http://newspapers.nl.sg). Articles from 1831 - 1989 can be accessed from home (direct links to the articles are provided) while those after 1989 can only be accessed onsite at the libraries.
  
  
• RSS feeds. Listings of the most recent articles from reputable websites. Simply click on the link to be brought to the webpage.
  
  
• Embedded videos. A picture speaks thousand words, what more a video? Click the play button on the embedded videos (from reputable sources) for some visual learning.
  

For more detailed information on accessing our print resources and electronic databases, please go to the section on "Accessing the Resources" in this same guide.

If you know of any interesting resource not featured in this guide, please share with us! It's easy, just click below :)

  

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