Western universities adjust as cloistered world of Sinology yields to much broader engagement

When I started studying Chinese 25 years ago, there were only a couple of universities in the United Kingdom that offered accessible language courses in Mandarin, and probably no more than a handful that offered students the chance to study Chinese society, history or literature.

Those days are over. Now, most universities in Europe, the United States and Australia aspire to have at least some courses on China.

This change is easy to understand. China is now one of the world's major economies, and a place that is more intensively studied than ever before. In the space of a generation, scholarship and engagement with the country has gone from being exotic and marginal to mainstream, and something that attracts more people hoping to develop careers centered on China or simply to understand the place better.

Old style Sinology with its concentration on academic output, specialist conferences and a small group of scholars devoting their lives to the study of China has been replaced by much broader, more diverse engagement, much of it enriched by the perspectives of researchers who are originally from China but now constitute the great global diaspora. An increasing number of universities have also set up specific centers concentrating on the study of or engagement with China.

These centers have a very practical function. They seek to bring scholars in different subject areas together to collaborate more; to create deeper and better links within China in government, academia and research institutes; and to deal with at least some of the huge new needs within communities in how best to understand China and make sense of its new prominence in our lives.

As the director of one of the largest such centers, at the University of Sydney, I have been struck by just how much potential there is in each of those three areas.

My university, 50,000 strong, with 6,000 students from China, has links going back more than 40 years with partners in the People's Republic. It has as many as 20,000 alumni in China.

And yet trying to find a manageable way to deal with all these different communities has been challenging.

Having a China center at least provides some focus, and shows the university has a vision for engagement that goes beyond offering language courses and receiving delegations. It is a symbol of commitment and of diversifying intellectual engagement.

No one should underestimate, however, how much commitment and work it takes to establish a good center. There needs to be constant engagement within the university about the importance of research as well as intellectual partnership with different bodies in China. There also must be a strong outreach program to the various communities in business, government and civil society that are starting to develop a real interest in China and demand for more diverse and nuanced material about its development, current situation and future prospects.

Putting the many different experts in universities together with these different kinds of audiences is stimulating but time-consuming and hard work.

The reward is the ability to offer one of the few places where these very different kinds of groups meet and are offered the chance to think about, engage directly with and understand China better.

In a very short time, companies, policymakers and the general public in a place like Australia have gone from regarding China as remote to their lives and their economies, to becoming a major part of their world.

Chinese students are the largest international cohort now coming to Australia to study. An eighth of the population of Sydney today is ethnically Chinese. Mandarin Chinese is the second most spoken language in Australia after English. And China is the largest trading partner for the country.

Not having a strategy of engagement with such an important country is no longer an option. So the sort of expertise and knowledge about China concentrated in a university is increasingly precious, and having a portal like a study center where people can access this is the most efficient way, and becoming increasingly common.

High quality academic work on China has to be supported, and a studies center should make this one of its priorities. But the old world where someone could study aspects of China in relative peace most of their lives, with only a few students, and very little public interest, is long over.

Scholars of China should, and the vast majority of them do, welcome the new profile their subject area is getting. My hunch is that in the future, for a university anywhere, having a center focused on China will be the norm, not the exception.

The author is executive director of the China Studies Center and professor of Chinese politics at the University of Sydney; team leader of the Europe China Research and Advice Network, funded by the European Union; and associate fellow at Chatham House, London.

(China Daily European Weekly 09/12/2014 page10)