Abstract: Over the past seven decades, the research on contemporary Chinese literature has witnessed a significant change from literary criticism in the narrow sense to a criticism integrated with historiographical source investigation. This change has shown its influence in the field of literary criticism. By An analysis of data on articles published in nine major journals such as Literary Review, Literature & Art Studies, and Modern Chinese Literature Studies from 2007 to 2017 shows that there have been two major forms of the interaction between literary criticism and historiographical sources, which may define as led to two approaches, namely, literary criticism via historiographical sources and historiographical sources via literary criticism.

Key words: contemporary Chinese literature studies, literary criticism via historiographical sources, historiographical sources via literary criticism, data-driven investigation, forms of interaction