Draft History of Qing
The Draft History of Qing () is a draft of the official history of the Qing dynasty compiled and written by a team of over 100 historians led by Zhao Erxun who were hired by the Beiyang government of the Republic of China. The draft was published in 1928, but the Chinese Civil War caused a lack of funding for the project and it was put to an end in 1930. The two sides of the Chinese civil war, the People's Republic of China and Republic of China have attempted to complete it. History The Qing imperial court had long established a Bureau of State Historiography and precompiled its own dynastic history. The massive book was started in 1914, and the rough copy was finished in about 1927. 1,100 copies of the book were published. The Beiyang government moved 400 of the original draft into the northern provinces, where it re-edited the content twice, thus creating three different versions of the book. It was banned by the Nationalist Government in 1930. The ban was lifted later, but still no further work was actually done partly due to continued warfare including the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). Historian Hsi-yuan Chen wrote in