I just logged onto Factiva through Harvard Libraries, to see how far back their Chinese language press sources go. Unfortunately, not far ... The Xinhua Chinese-language services (traditional and simplified characters) only go back to 2002, compared to 1989 for the Xinhua English wire service. The problem is probably related to technology ... I imagine that for Factiva to be able to store and display non-Western language character sets, a significant upgrade on the servers or database software was required.
In any case, 2002 is too recent for my purposes for a comparison study, although at least in the case of Xinhua's English service, I can turn to LexisNexis, which goes back to 1977.
I'll have to see if Harvard Libraries have access to any other searchable Chinese-language press databases from the 1980s and 1990s.
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