Brave New World : Contemporary Chinese Research on Republican Period Banditry

Because of the difficulty of ascertaining their real nature, the bandits that characterized Republican China (1912-1949) were virtually ignored by post-1949 mainland historians until comparatively recently. Not until the 1990s, when political controls relaxed and China again began to see stories of "highwaymen" and "train bandits" featured in the local and national press, were bandits taken up by historians as a serious research topic. This article, by reviewing the major works of post-1949 scholarship, surveys the changing attitudes towards bandits of mainland historians from 1949 to 2001. It finds that "bandit studies" have indeed come of age in the two decades following the commencement of the "Reform & Opening" era, but that there remain certain inbuilt limitations. Chief among these limitations is the reluctance of historians to tackle the topic of relations between bandits and the Communist Party during its armed struggle phase. The article also examines the reasons for historians\u27 change of heart toward the study of bandits, including the influence of contacts with foreign scholars made possible by the Reform and Opening era