This bibliography presents essays on the study of post-1949 China, and the basic sources and their limitations. The former precedes several bibliographical essays on specific aspects of the People's Republic of China. It traces the evolution of scholarly writings on China by identifying the major sources on contemporary China, portraying their main limitations, and assessing the effect of the changing mix of sources available to the foreign researcher. The essay on the basic sources includes information on the Chinese press, memoirs and travelogues, creative arts, and English-language secondary literature. The Chinese press provides the staple for research on China: books, journals, and newspapers. These sources come from diverse institutions throughout the political system. The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party began to publish the People's Daily soon after the Party established itself in Peking, and since 1958 the Party has published Red Flag as its leading theoretical journal.

China's top foreign policy goal was to develop good relations with its socialist "elder brother", the Soviet Union. The newly established People's Republic of China was soon faced with the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. The Sino-American antagonism fueled by the Korean War set the pattern for the subsequent Cold War in Asia. Consequently the potential friction between China and the Soviet Union was played down by both sides. In the mid-1950s China's foreign policy thus followed what might be termed the Bandung Line of peaceful coexistence. China's prestige and influence rose steadily, and at one point Peking seemed to be emerging as the champion of the world's newly independent nations. Mao Tse-tung witnessed the signing of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, and the treaty was basically a military pact designed to display the monolithic unity of China and the Soviet Union against any resurgence of Japanese militarism.