Since its preparatory office was established in 1955, the Institute of Modern History (IMH) of Academia Sinica has made every effort with regards to collecting historical materials, such as collecting government archives and soliciting personal papers, the aim of which is to provide a solid foundation for modern historical research. Supported by the Academia Sinica Center for Digital Cultures, the IMH Archives has executed three digital value-added projects since 2016 and has obtained fruitful results, namely, the Digital Archives of Modern Chinese Historical Documents on Foreign and Economic Affairs Project (2016), Digital Archives and Value-added Applications of Modern Chinese Historical Documents on Economic Affairs Project (2017-2018) and the Post-war Rural Demobilization and Resources Reorganization Project (2019-2020). Through the Rural Demobilization project, the Archives recognized the importance of the governmental effort to increase agricultural production in the post-war period, and decided to develop a further two-year applied research project, titled the "Increasing Agricultural Production: Modern Chinese Agricultural Promotion and Added-Value Project."

Increasing Agricultural Production: Modern Chinese Agricultural Promotion and Added-Value Project, is a digital value-adding project utilizing the Agricultural Promotion Commission files in the Archives of the IMH as the research subject, that will examine issues related to increases in food production and agricultural development in modern China. The scope of time spans 1940-1949, covering agriculture promotion-related work funding, financial statements, personnel appointments, and promotion information for the 26 regions of China from the War of Resistance Against Japan to the postwar period. The aim is to firstly sort the materials and then classify, calculate and annotate them. The research will be oriented towards four sub-projects, on the topics of social networks, rural village economy, agricultural promotion, and agricultural science. Secondly, the data of already-established social network analyses will continue to be renewed and upgraded to widen their view, and the Agricultural Promotion Value-added Databank will be restructured to allow browsing and searching. ASCDC's Open Museum will also be used to provide interpretive focus through digital exhibits, allowing online open access and fully bringing into play the research platform function. The research trend in Digital Humanities at present is writing down and analyzing the contents described in traditional archives and then moving in the direction of Big Data to facilitate application.

Aside from data on food and manpower for all China's provinces, the Agricultural Promotion Commission Archives also have a significant amount of data on agricultural promotion, talent promotion, demotion, etc. The study team and IMH staff will use metadata column analysis and sorting to mark the significant data, key words, personal names and geographical information in the archives, moving in the direction of Linked Open Data (LOD); displaying the analysis of agricultural promotion in each city, county, area and province; observing changes in personnel, events and objects in the wartime period and post-war demobilization period; and comparing these to traditional quantitative analysis. This will represent an original approach to the study of economic history. The core aims of Digital Humanities are nothing else but collecting, teaching, research, and display. This project aims to combine a simple databank with tools such as social network analysis and GIS to allow it to evolve into a more mature knowledge bank.