The Washington Document Center Collection

The Chinese book collections, transferred from the Washington Documentation Center in 1959, are listed in two parts.

List A is the South Manchuria Railway Company Chinese Collection, which consists of 488 titles in 6,896 volumes. They are the late Qing editions or the reprints of the Ming editions of Chinese ancient classics. There are also Chinese political, social, economic materials in this collection, which had been collected by the officials of the Japanese South Manchuria Railway Company in the period of the Sino-Japanese War. These materials provided Japanese scholars, government officials, military officers, and young cadets in the Japanese military schools with research and teaching materials, and more importantly furnished the brains for the advancement of Japan's aims and policies in China.

List B is the Arrearage Chinese Collection, which consists of 640 titles in 6,496 volumes. They are surplus volumes and the uncatalogued Chinese ancient classics. Some of them are the gifts donated by the American diplomats and missionaries who served in China in the late Qing period or the early Republican years.

The reference librarians of the Division will update the contents of these two lists continuously.