Introduction Allen Carlson, Mary Gallagher and Melanie Manion; Part I. Sources: 1. State-generated data and contentious politics in China Xi Chen; 2. Why archives? Neil J. Diamant; 3. The central committee, past and present: a method of quantifying elite biographies Victor Shih, Wei Shan and Mingxing Liu; 4. Experimental methods and psychological measures in the study of Chinese foreign policy Peter Hays Gries; 5. Internet resources and the study of Chinese foreign relations: can cyberspace shed new light on China's approach to the world? Allen Carslon and Hong Duan; 6. Information overload? Collecting, managing, and analyzing Chinese media content Daniela Stockman; Part II. Qualitative Methods: 7. The worm's-eye view: using ethnography to illuminate labor politics and institutional change in contemporary China Calvin Chen; 8. More than an interview, less than Sedaka: studying subtle and hidden politics with site-intensive methods Benjamin L. Read; 9. Cases, questions, and comparison in research on contemporary Chinese politics William Hurst; Part III. Survey Methods: 10. A survey of survey research on Chinese politics: what have we learned? Melanie Manion; 11. Surveying prospects for political change: capturing political and economic variation in empirical research in China Bruce J. Dickson; 12. Using clustered spatial data to study diffusion: the case of legal institutions in China Pierre F. Landry; 13. Measuring change and stability over a decade in the Beijing area study Mingming Shen and Ming Yang with Melanie Manion; 14. Quantitative research and issues of political sensitivity in rural China Lily L. Tsai; Reflections on the evolution of the China field in political science Kenneth Lieberthal; Glossary.