Page 118 - Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.47, 2021

ZHANG Bin & YIN Xin / Historical development and contemporary construction 117
of the basic theoretical system of archival science with Chinese characteristics

1.1 The initial stage (1949-1977)

The founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 has laid a solid social foundation for the
development of domestic archival undertakings, based on which the basic theories of archival
science began to take roots and grow, reflected in various ways, such as the confirmation of
principle of centralized and unified management under the leadership of the Party and the guiding
principles of Marxism-Leninism; clarification of the socialist superiority of archival science in
China; determination of the fundamental purpose of archival science, i.e. to serve the construction
of the socialist country; identification of the essential attribute of archives—to record history; and
initial establishment of the concept system, research object system and basic principle system of
archival science, marking the transformation of archival science from passively learning from other
countries to actively developing its own characteristics.
After 1949, several generations of archivists represented by WU Baokang, on the basis of the old
knowledge system of the discipline, went beyond the limits of the previous practice that focused
only on the collation and cataloging of archives, and gradually established a basic theoretical
system of socialist archival science with Chinese characteristics, which not only changed the
situation of the lack of archival theories in the old times, but also localized foreign archival
theories in China, while making innovation and breakthrough at the same time.
(1) Establishment of the concept system
The purpose of establishing the basic theoretical system of archival science in the early days of
the People’s Republic of China was mainly to adapt to and serve the archival undertakings that
was in urgent need at that time. The concept system of archival science was also a reflection of the
close attention to the phenomena and patterns of archival work.
In 1960, the Department of Historical Archives of Renmin University of China compiled and
published the Introduction to Archival Science: Lecture Notes (first draft), in which archival
science is defined as “a knowledge system reflecting the objective patterns of the practice of
archival work” . The book defines and elaborates on several basic issues on archives, archival
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management and archival science. First, it describes the formation process of archives and provides
related definitions. Second, it interprets the basic principles of archival management, such as
centralized and unified management and the integration of records and archives. Third, it defines
the concepts of “entity classification” and “information classification” of archives. And fourth, it
defines the concepts of archival science, and interprets the basic theories of archival science, such
as research content, research scope, and basic tasks. In 1962, the Science of Archives Management,
compiled by the Department of Historical Archives of Renmin University of China, further
defined the concepts of “archive”, “all archives of the country”, “whole file”, “classification” and
“cataloging” on the basis of the 1960 edition of the Introduction to Archival Science: Lecture Notes
(first draft), and defined archive as “records produced in the work and production of government
agencies, enterprises and public institutions, which have investigation and utilization value and are