China studies coming to the fore

Updated: 2015-01-02 08:52

By Rana Mitter(China Daily Europe)

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This year, Chinese scholars may conduct more in-depth research on topics separate from nation itself

This year will surely see yet more developments in the academic study of China. China expertise in the wider world is one of the major channels that informs media and the public sector, so it is important that such research remains cutting-edge and relevant. Fortunately, the study of China in the academy is one field where developments will continue to be seen in 2015, and beyond.

One example of this growth was very visible in my own backyard.In September, Oxford University was privileged to host a major event: the opening of the university's China Centre, in the presence of Prince William.

The center is housed in the magnificent new Dickson Poon building and is the single biggest such institution for the study of China in Europe. But the symbolism of the event is just as important as the physical opening of the building. For the Oxford University China Centre stands as a global resource, not just for one university or country, and its opening reminds us that the study of China continues to grow in scope around the world. This year we will face the challenge of making sure that our research on China matches the very big questions that country will throw at us.

Of course there are many fine institutions around the world that seek to analyze China both past and present. Here, I am going to suggest some ways in which research on China is likely to be taken forward in the global academy, and ways in which the research that emerges can be part of a wider conversation between China and the world.

In 2015, history is likely to be in the frontline of the study of China. The 70th anniversary of the ending of World War II in Asia is going to be a major event in China, and in the West, there will be further interest in why this set of events was so important for Asia. Until recently, the major Chinese role in the war, which for China lasted from 1937 to 1945, has not been widely understood in the West, whether it was the millions of deaths or the huge effect on China's modernization in the 1930s.

The resolution of the war in 1945 is back in the news because it has had such a profound effect on the arrangements in Asia today. As Chinese history becomes more central to history departments around the world, we can expect further interest in many aspects of the Chinese past.

The global situation is likely to bring up a new interest in international relations and China's role in the world order. The year's biggest confrontations, between Russia and Ukraine, and the emergence of ISIL in the Middle East, have not yet been closely associated with China. However, there is growing interest in international society in China's attitude toward these geopolitical crises, as scholarly attention is paid to changing ideas of international order. Will China seek to maintain the basic pillars of today's international system, which was essentially formed in the post-World War II environment and the early years of the Cold War?

Up to this point, there has been much discussion of China's growing geopolitical role, but in practice, China has been reluctant to take too strong a stand on questions that are not in its own backyard. This means revisiting one of the big questions of geopolitics today: Is there really a new world order emerging, or should we really expect Western dominance for a long period to come? At the start of 2014, it would have been hard to predict events either in Ukraine or the Middle East.

This year will no doubt bring more geopolitical challenges and China's attitude will be examined with even more curiosity. We should look out, in particular, for more academic attention outside the Western world: in India and Brazil, to name but two countries, interest in China is profound and growing, and we are likely to see more interest in the study of China in the academies of those countries. The new focus on the environmental issues will also stimulate a great deal more work on China's attitude toward issues of climate change.

The political economy of China will also be at the center of academic attention. For financiers, there are a variety of key questions about China's economy that have to do with changes day by day.

In the academic field, studies of the economy will often be longer-range, and interact more with other social sciences, including sociology and anthropology. For instance, China's urbanization will continue to speed up. However, scholars will want to see how this changes life on the ground. As local authorities continue to change from rural to urban usage for land, everything changes on the ground; old communities shift shape radically as workers are relocated or move to find work.

The study of social science of China has altered radically in the past few decades, with detailed fieldwork now underpinning research. We must expect that in 2015, as social change continues to be rapid, that we will find yet more ways in which Chinese society will need to be reinterpreted.

We should also remember that the study of China is not just about the modern world. The study of China's past, including its classical literature and philosophy, is likely to also increase in importance in the year to come. At this moment, there is an increasing interest within China itself in the country's own philosophical and ethical past, as China seeks to find ways to use its indigenous systems of thought to shape ethics and behavior in the present day.

We can expect to see further interaction and debate as philosophers and thinkers in China and the rest of the world analyze and debate the meaning of the great thinkers from the ancient Chinese world particularly if those thinkers appear more frequently in public rhetoric in China itself.

One element that will continue to be ever more important in 2015 is the interaction between scholars in the wider world and in China itself. Over the past few years, there have been moves away from a model in which China was regarded purely as an object of inquiry for the outside world, and instead, systems of research cooperation have developed between China's universities and think tanks in which researchers from different countries work with Chinese colleagues.

At the moment, their topics of inquiry are still mostly related to China. This is not surprising the new importance and emergence of China is one of the biggest global stories and it is natural that the study of China should be so all-consuming in the place most centrally concerned with that story. But it will be interesting to see if 2015 is the year when Chinese scholars begin more extensively to conduct more in-depth research on topics separated from China itself.

The author is director of the Dickson Poon University of Oxford China Centre. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

 

China studies coming to the fore

Li Min / China Daily

(China Daily European Weekly 01/02/2015 page6)