ABSTRACT
Significant changes have taken place in Chinese historiography in the reform era since the 1980s. To recast modern Chinese history by highlighting reforms and the opening-up process in the past, was at once politically correct and academically desirable. The influence of theories and concepts from the West was another source leading to the transformation of Chinese historiography in the reform era. The development of Chinese historiography in the last three decades can be seen in large part as a series of battles between traditional and revisionist Marxist or non-Marxist historians. Mao Zedong's interpretive scheme was first accepted by Fan Wenlan in his work on modern Chinese history and, after 1949, unanimously adopted by Chinese historians in the People's Republic. Scholarly efforts to reinterpret modern Chinese history from the modernization perspective began in the late 1980s, when modernization theory was introduced to China, and culminated in the publication of books on the history of China's modernization authored mainly by historians.
