Research Methodology | Free China Movement

Free China Movement (FCM) conducts historical, human-rights, constitutional, political, and public-policy research involving subjects for which evidence may be incomplete, dispersed across languages and jurisdictions, or politically contested.

This methodology explains how we seek, evaluate, and present evidence.

1. Define the Research Question

Research begins by identifying the question to be answered rather than selecting evidence to support a predetermined conclusion. Where appropriate, FCM separates established facts, disputed facts, allegations, firsthand recollections, documentary evidence, interpretations, institutional analysis, and questions that remain unresolved.

2. Search for Primary Evidence

We give particular weight to primary evidence, including contemporaneous documents; laws and regulations; court and administrative records; official publications; organizational records; photographs, video, and audio; original correspondence; archival collections; firsthand testimony and oral histories; and contemporaneous journalism.

Primary evidence is not automatically reliable. Its authorship, provenance, purpose, timing, internal consistency, and relationship to other evidence must still be evaluated.

3. Use Secondary Sources for Corroboration and Context

Academic research, reputable journalism, books, NGO reports, databases, biographies, and other secondary materials can provide essential context and independent corroboration. Whenever feasible, consequential claims found in secondary sources are traced back to their underlying evidence.

4. Evaluate Source Reliability

Relevant considerations may include proximity, timing, independence, corroboration, provenance, incentives and bias, and internal and external consistency. Political affiliation or viewpoint alone does not determine whether evidence is accepted or rejected.

5. Triangulate Important Claims

For consequential or disputed claims, FCM seeks multiple forms of evidence whenever reasonably possible. Agreement among sources is most persuasive when the sources are genuinely independent. Ten publications repeating the same original assertion do not constitute ten independent confirmations.

6. Preserve Contradictory Evidence

Evidence that challenges an expected conclusion should not be discarded merely because it is inconvenient. Material contradictions should be investigated and, where relevant, disclosed. When available evidence does not justify a definitive conclusion, FCM should say so. Appropriate descriptions may include confirmed, strongly supported, probable, uncertain, disputed, unverified, or not established, depending on context.

7. Historical Memory and Oral Testimony

Firsthand testimony can preserve facts unavailable in written archives, particularly where censorship, political repression, destruction of records, or exile has fragmented the historical record. Memory can also change over time. FCM therefore seeks, when possible, to compare retrospective recollections with contemporaneous documents, photographs, recordings, independent witnesses, and established chronology. A participant’s testimony should be identified as testimony rather than automatically converted into an independently established fact.

8. Chinese-Language and Multilingual Research

Research concerning China frequently requires comparison among Chinese and non-Chinese sources. FCM may search and compare materials in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish, and other languages where useful. Translations should preserve substantive meaning. Important original terminology may be retained when translation could obscure a political, historical, or legal distinction.

9. Government and Party Sources

Official sources can be indispensable evidence of laws, policies, government positions, prosecutions, statistics, and administrative actions. They are evaluated as sources, not presumed to be neutral accounts. Claims from the Mainland Chinese Communist Government or Chinese Communist Party are distinguished, where necessary, from facts independently established through other evidence. The same evidentiary principle applies to other governments and political organizations.

10. Digital and Archival Verification

Where relevant and feasible, researchers may examine publication dates, archived versions, document metadata, provenance, original-language editions, duplicate or derivative copies, historical snapshots, and relationships among apparently independent sources. FCM seeks to preserve important source information so future researchers can reconstruct the evidentiary basis of significant findings.

11. AI-Assisted Research

Artificial intelligence can substantially expand multilingual discovery, document comparison, classification, translation, and analysis. It can also produce errors or fabricated information. AI-generated assertions are therefore not considered evidence merely because an AI system produced them. Important factual conclusions should be grounded in identifiable underlying sources.

12. Living Research

Historical and public-policy research is not necessarily final when a page is published. New archives may become available. Witnesses may provide additional testimony. Previously inaccessible documents may be digitized. Existing interpretations may be challenged. FCM may revise research when stronger evidence warrants revision and should preserve an appropriate record of significant corrections or changes.

13. Invitation to Challenge Our Findings

FCM welcomes documentary evidence that supports, refines, or contradicts our published findings. Readers who identify a factual error, missing source, mistranslation, archival record, conflicting testimony, or other relevant evidence are encouraged to contact us.

Our objective is not to make the historical record conform to an institutional narrative. Our objective is to make the record more complete, verifiable, and useful.

Last reviewed: September 2026