China Leadership Foreign Exchanges DB v1.0

Method summary

The full method is documented in the companion methodology paper (in preparation for a peer-reviewed data journal). This page is a short public summary; the full method panel is available in the gated preview after access approval.

Binding scope statement

This database records all publicly available and source-verifiable official foreign-exchange events involving the defined set of Chinese leadership figures, roles, and time periods. Each recorded event is verified by source, date, principal, official role, and counterpart.

Five-axis verification

  1. Source. The event has a URL on one of twelve registered PRC-side official source families.
  2. Date. The article body reports the event date (or unambiguous publish-date correspondence).
  3. Principal. The article names one of the 27 registered principals.
  4. Official role at the time of the event. The role held on the event date, recorded independently of the principal's current title (role-tenure modelling).
  5. Counterpart. The article names the counterpart (person and/or institutional affiliation).

Five methodological commitments

  1. Full collection within a defined scope.
  2. Strict source policy (article-level URLs on registered families).
  3. Event-level verification (five axes; article-body granularity).
  4. Role-tenure modelling.
  5. Transparent soft-hold ledger (19 documented absences).

Registered PRC-side source families (12)

  • source.mofa-prc — Ministry of Foreign Affairs (fmprc.gov.cn)
  • source.state-council-prc — State Council (gov.cn)
  • source.npc-prc — National People's Congress (npc.gov.cn)
  • source.cppcc — CPPCC (cppcc.gov.cn)
  • source.idcpc — International Department, CPC Central Committee (idcpc.gov.cn)
  • source.xinhua — Xinhua News Agency (news.cn)
  • source.peoples-daily — People's Daily (people.cn)
  • source.nea-prc — National Energy Administration (nea.gov.cn)
  • source.mod-prc — Ministry of National Defense (reserved; military-diplomacy module)
  • source.china-military-online — China Military Online (reserved)
  • source.prc-overseas-missions — PRC embassies / consulates (rescue family)
  • source.12371 — Communist Party Member Net (rescue family)

Known limits

The database does not record unpublished diplomacy, internal Politburo Standing Committee deliberation, negotiation content, or policy outcomes. The military-diplomacy module is registered at the schema level but not ingested in v1.0. The bound is part of the claim, not a defect.

Reproducibility

The dataset is SHA-256-pinned; a validator and 2,467-test suite enforce structural and substantive invariants. Reproducibility detail is documented in the companion methodology paper.