The Effect of the Cold War on Librarianship in China

Librarianship in China can be divided into four distinct areas because of the Cold War. The first period covers approximately 1840 to 1949. When Chinese intellectuals realized that Chinese libraries were underdeveloped, they began looking at foreign librarianship, and American practices became dominant within Chinese libraries. In 1949, following the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, the ideological differences between Communist China and the capitalist United States forced Chinese librarians to renounce all American librarianship ideologies, and the ideological pendulum swung toward socialist library ideas dominated by Soviet librarianship. Because of the Cuban Missile Crisis and a three-year ecological disaster in China, relations between the U.S.S.R. and China broke down, and from 1966 to 1976 China was segregated from the two superpowers and underwent the Great Proletarian Culture Revolution. During this time intellectuals suffered political persecution and were reeducated in manual labor camps. Library science came to a standstill, and many books were destroyed because of censorship. The fourth and final phase of Chinese librarianship covers the period from 1977 to 1991, when relations between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China normalized, and library theory and technology from the West began again to exert an influence on Chinese librarianship. Chinese librarianship grew and developed substantially during this time period and allowed Chinese librarians to reenter the international arena.