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The oracle inscriptions of the Shang, the inscribed bamboo strips of the Han, and the documents found in Dunhuang can already be considered the remains of archives. The largest number of archival documents still extant today, however, date from the Qing period, the Chinese Republic, and the years after 1949. The most important central archives are the First Historical Archives of China in Beijing, the Palace Museum Archives in Taipei (late Ming and Qing periods), the Second Historical Archives o…

With the founding of the PRC in 1949 and the imitation of the Stalinist model, for the first time ever a Chinese government took direct responsibility for the development of technology and the natural sciences. In the wake of extensive Soviet support in the form of advisors, training, and equipment, the Soviet system of scientific and technological organization was adopted. This system clearly tended to centralize research at the academies instead of the universities and to focus on topics relev…

Apart from the assessment of results by purely scientific criteria, any adequate treatment of the history of science in traditional societies has to employ a historical point of view and a perspective specific to that civilization. In this sense, science may be defined as all those intellectual efforts of the past by means of which people to come to the integrated grasp of natural phenomena in an abstract and systematic manner. Besides, one has to assume that the aims and means of pre-modern sci…