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ABSTRACT
In the nearly 75 years that the People’s Republic of China has been in existence, the field of contemporary China studies in the United States has developed and evolved through six distinguishable ‘generations’ of scholarship. The evolving social science scholarly analyses of contemporary China have paralleled the changes in the PRC itself over time, but they have also reflected paradigmatic changes in scholarly disciplines in the United States. Other stimuli which have also impacted the field include domestic politics in America and shifts in US-China relations. This article traces the evolution of field (as observed and interpreted by the author); it concludes that while the field is generally very healthy, diverse, and enjoys great breadth and depth of knowledge, it faces significant new challenges for source material and research in Xi Jinping’s China.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
* This article had its genesis as a Director’s Distinguished Lecture at the University of Oxford China Centre, October 28, 2022. I am most grateful to Professors Todd Hall and Rosemary Foot for the invitation. I am also particularly grateful to Robert Ash, Bruce Dickson, Terry Lautz, Andrew Nathan, and Andrew Walder for very insightful comments on earlier draft versions of this article. The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.
1These are, of course, my own reflections and interpretations; no doubt other colleagues will remember the past differently and may well disagree with my interpretations.
2 See David Shambaugh (ed.), American Studies of Contemporary China (Washington, DC and Armonk, NY: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and M.E. Sharpe 1993); John M.H. Lindbeck, Understanding China: An Assessment of American Scholarly Resources (New York: Praeger Publishers 1971); Tai-chün Kuo and Ramon H. Meyers, Communist China Studies in the United States and the Republic of China: 1949–1978 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press 1986); Ramon H. Myers and Thomas A. Metzger, ‘Sinological Shadows: The State of Modern China Studies in the United States’, The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 4 (July 1980), pp. 1–34; Elizabeth Perry, ‘Partners at Fifty: American China Studies and the PRC’, Harvard Asia Quarterly (Autumn 1999); Andrew G. Walder, ‘The Transformation of Contemporary China Studies, 1977–2002’, in David L. Szanton (ed.), The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines (Berkeley: University of California Press 2004; Michel Oksenberg, ‘Politics Takes Command: An Essay on the Study of Post-1949 China’, The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 14 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987), pp. 543–590; Harry Harding, ‘From China with Disdain: New Trends in the Study of China’, Asian Survey (October 1982), pp. 934–958; Richard Wilson, ‘China Studies in Crisis’, World Politics, vol. 23 (January 1971), pp. 295–317; Edward Friedman, ‘In Defense of China Studies’, Pacific Affairs (Summer 1982), pp. 525–266; Andrew Mertha, ‘A Half Century of Engagement: The Study of China and the Role of the China Scholar Community’, in Anne F. Thurston (ed.), Engaging China: Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations (New York: Columbia University Press 2021). There have also been a considerable number of subject- and discipline-specific state-of-the-field articles published in The China Quarterly and other journals.
3 Robert F. Ash, David Shambaugh, and Seiichiro Takagi (eds.), China Watching: Perspectives from Europe, Japan, and the United States (London: Routledge 2007). This volume contains parallel chapters on the study of domestic Chinese politics, China’s economy, and China’s foreign and security policies.
4 E. Stuart Kirby, Russian Studies of China: Progress and Problems of Soviet Sinology (London: MacMillan 1975); Gilbert Rozman, A Mirror for Socialism: Soviet Criticisms of China (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985). Also see Robert Michael Gates, Soviet Sinology: An Untapped Source for Kremlin Views and Disputes Relating to Contemporary Events in China, PhD. Dissertation, Department of Government, Georgetown University Government Department, 1974 (note that Dr. Gates went on to a distinguished career in U.S. public service, including serving as Director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense).
5 Kuan Hsin-chi (ed.), The Development of Contemporary China Studies (Tokyo: Center for East Asian Cultural Studies for UNESCO, The Toyo Bunko 1994).
6 Marie-Luise Näth (ed.), Communist China in Retrospect (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Publishers 1995). This volume is unusual because it contains first-hand impressions of China by East European students and diplomats who resided in the PRC during the 1950s-1960s. Another study of Sinology in the former Soviet bloc is Antonina Luszczykiewicz and Michael C. Brose (eds.), Sinology During the Cold War (London: Routledge 2022).
7 Social Science Research Council, Asia-China Knowledge Networks: State of the Field (New York: Social Science Research Council 2022): https://www.ssrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Asia-China-Knowledge-Networks-State-of-the-Field-SSRC-Dec-22.pdf.
8 When I served as Editor of The China Quarterly (1991–96) I created dedicated sections of the journal for ‘State of the Field’ and ‘Concepts and Methods’. See, for example, Ryosei Kokubun, ‘The Current State of Contemporary Chinese Studies in Japan’, The China Quarterly, no. 107 (September 1986), pp. 505–518; Lucien Bianco, ‘French Studies of Contemporary China’, The China Quarterly, no. 142 (June 1995), pp. 509–520); Mark Sidel, ‘The Reemergence of China Studies in Vietnam’, The China Quarterly, no. 142 (June 1995), pp. 521–540; Graham E. Johnson, ‘The True North Strong: Contemporary Chinese Studies in Canada’, The China Quarterly, no. 143 (September 1995), pp. 851–866; Gilbert Rozman, ‘Moscow’s China Watchers in the Post-Mao Era’, The China Quarterly, no. 94 (June 1983), pp. 215–241; Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, ‘Contemporary China Studies in Scandinavia’, The China Quarterly, no. 147 (September 1996), pp. 938–961.
9 ‘Special Issue: The State of the China Studies Field’, Issues & Studies, vol. 38, no. 4/vol. 39, no. 1 (December 2002/March 2003).
10 This number does not include the FBI or other law enforcement agencies (which have their own in-house China officers).
12 See David Szanton (ed.), The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines, op cit.
13 In the case of China see Lucian W. Pye, ‘Social Science Theories in Search of Chinese Realities’, The China Quarterly, op cit. More broadly, among the huge literature on the subject, see Szanton, ibid.
14 In 1986 Michel Oksenberg authored a short but insightful essay on this topic: ‘Can Scholarship Flourish When Intertwined with Politics?’ APLS Newsletter (Winter/Spring 1986), pp. 48–59.
15 See Robert Marks, ‘The State of the China Field: Or, the China Field and the State’, Modern China, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 461–509; Robert Moss, ‘The Structure and direction of Contemporary China Studies’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (Summer/Fall 1971), pp. 113–137; James Peck, ‘The Roots of Rhetoric: The Professional Ideology of America’s China Watchers’, Bulletin of Concern Asian Scholars (October 1969), pp. 59–69. This polemic is well described by Richard Madsen in ‘The Academic China Specialists’, in Shambaugh (ed.), American Studies of Contemporary China, op cit.
16 See, for example, Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People’s Republic Targets America (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing,2002); Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy (New York: Encounter Books 2021).
17 See Aaron L. Friedberg, Getting China Wrong (Cambridge: Polity 2022); Orville Schell, ‘The Death of Engagement’, The Wire China, June 7, 2020: https://www.thewirechina.com/2020/06/07/the-birth-life-and-death-of-engagement/.
18 See, for example, Peter Schweizer, Red Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win (New York: Harper Collins 2022); Isaac Stone Fish, America Second: How American Elites Are Making China Stronger (New York: Knopf 2022).
19 See, for example, Anne F. Thurston (ed.), Engaging China: Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021); Alastair I. Johnston, ‘The Failures of the “Failure of Engagement” with China’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Summer 2019), pp. 99–114.
20 For a superb study of the evolution of the Soviet Studies field see David C. Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (New York: Oxford University Press 2009). Someone should write a similarly careful study of the China field.
21 See, for example, Julian Gewirtz, Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2022).
22 Also see my China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now (Cambridge: Polity Press 2021, 2023).
23 The Institute of International Relations at National Cheng-chi University on Taiwan was the other significant ‘CHICOM (Chinese Communist) watching’ center at the time, but access to its collection of materials (which included some ferreted out of the mainland by covert Nationalist intelligence raids) was often restricted.
24 See Roderick MacFarquhar, ‘On Photographs’, The China Quarterly, No. 46 (June 1971), pp. 289–307.
25 See, for example, Robert Scalapino (ed.), Elites in the Peoples Republic of China (Seattle: University of Washington Press 1972); John Lewis, Leadership in Communist China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1963).
26 See the classic work by Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press 1968); Chalmers Johnson (ed.), Ideology and Politics in Contemporary China (Seattle: University of Washington Press 1973).
27 John M. H. Lindbeck, Understanding China: An Assessment of American Scholarly Resources, op cit. A complete itemized listing of all Ford grants, the institutional recipients, the amounts, and the specific programs are listed in Lindbeck, op cit, Appendix V.
28 Ford also funded a number of non-American institutions: the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) and its Contemporary China Institute (CCI) in London; the Asian Studies Center at Oxford University, the Center for Chinese Studies in New Delhi, India; Kyoto University; Academic Sinica in Taiwan; the Australian National University; the Institute for Asian Studies in Hamburg, University of Bochum University of Munich, and the Free University in Berlin, Germany. Source: Lindbeck, ibid, pp. 153–156. Specific amounts of grants are given.
29 The JCCC received $1 million in 1965 alone. Ibid, p. 150.
30 Ibid, p. 107.
31 I was one of them—first going for language studies in 1980 (Nankai) and 1982 (Fudan), then during 1983–85 as the first foreign student permitted to study in a department of international relations (Beida).
32 My dissertation was subsequently revised and published as Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972–1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1991).
33 See Andrew Nathan, ‘China’s Changing of the Guard: Authoritarian Resilience’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 1 (January 2003), pp. 6–17.
34 David Shambaugh, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation (Washington, DC and Berkeley, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and University of California Press 2008).
35 In 2004 Andrew Walder noted that ‘Important sample surveys have been completed in the past ten years on political participation and political attitudes, rural household incomes, health and nutrition, mate choice and marriage patterns, social stratification and mobility, and other subjects’. Walder, ‘The Transformation of Contemporary China Studies’, op cit, pp. 314–340.
36 Andrew Mertha, ‘A Half Century of Engagement: The Study of China and the Role of the China Scholarly Community’, op cit, p. 100.
37 Richard Madsen makes this point, and uses the term ‘sect’, in ‘The Academic China Specialists’, in Shambaugh (ed.), The American Study of Contemporary China, op cit.
38 Minxin Pei’s work is illustrative and impressive.
39 See, for example, Susan Shirk, Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise (New York: Oxford University Press 2022).
40 For these conceptual distinctions see my China’s Future (Cambridge: Polity Press 2016).
41 ‘Great Academic Walls: Studying China Is Getting Much Harder’, The Economist, April 8, 2023.
42 See Glenn D. Tiffert, ‘Peering Down the Memory Hole: Censorship, Digitization, and the Fragility of Our Knowledge Base’, American Historical Review, Vol. 124, No. 2 (April 2019), pp. 550–568.
43 See Han Bochen, ‘A Portal to China is Closing, and Researchers Are Nervous’, South China Morning Post, March 25, 2023.
44 Pola Lem, ‘Could China Be on the Verge of Breaking Up Database Publishing?’ Inside Higher Education, May 4, 2022.
45 See: https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/h-c-fung-library/. The Fairbank Library contains over 30,000 volumes, about half of which are in Chinese. Among its many (and unique) strengths, the collection contains a large number of materials on the Chinese Communist Party and a considerable number of internal (内部) materials. Librarian Nancy Hearst deserves the credit and gratitude of the entire field for her painstaking and diligent efforts to build the Fairbank collection over time.
46 See: https://library.gwu.edu/cdc. The CDC collection is entirely composed of Chinese language materials. It contains approximately 10,000 books, and over 100 complete runs of hard copy periodicals (as well as a number of electronic databases). The collection is truly unique in its holdings of materials on the Chinese military (PLA), Chinese Communist Party, Chinese government, China’s foreign relations, internal security, and Chinese law. Most of the materials in these categories are not to be found in other collections outside of China (and even inside of China).
47 In order to make its collection more accessible to the international scholarly community, the China Documentation Center at GWU is now (2023) beginning a two-year project of the systematic digitization of its more unique holdings. The digitized materials will be uploaded on the CDC’s website in a rolling fashion following digitization.
48 Chinese text of the law can be found at: http://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/c30834/202304/a386e8ffa3d94047ab2f0d89b1ea73c4.shtml. English text can be found at: https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/counter-espionage-law-2023/. Also see Nadya Yeh, ‘Should You be Frightened by China’s Revision to the Anti-Espionage Law?’ The China Project, May 2, 2023: https://thechinaproject.com/2023/05/02/should-you-be-frightened-by-chinas-revision-to-the-anti-espionage-law/?utm_source=The+China+Project&utm_campaign=17343ee09a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_05_05_03_31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_03c0779d50-17343ee09a-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D.
49 See Karin Fischer, ‘Slamming the Door on Scholarship’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 21, 2023: https://www.chronicle.com/article/slamming-the-door-on-scholarship; Lingling Wei, Yoko Kubota, and Dan Strumpf, ‘China Locks Information on the Country Inside a Black Box’, Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2023.
50 See Madsen, ‘The Academic China Specialists’, in Shambaugh (ed.), The American Study of Contemporary China, op cit.
51 See U.S. Department of Education, IFLE Grantee Institutions: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1T4OgU-X5xucBUxVXmdG-DGqOs0hkhdk&ll=52.86249649956193%2C–147.1238571989058&z=2.
52 At George Washington’s Elliott School of International Affairs, I teach 50 undergraduate students and 60 graduate students every academic year (enrollments are capped at these numbers, but demand is stronger).
53 Laura Silver et al, ‘Americans Are Critical of China’s Global Role—Most See Little Ability for the US and China to Cooperate’, Pew Research Center, April 12, 2023: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/04/12/americans-are-critical-of-chinas-global-role-as-well-as-its-relationship-with-russia/.
54 See David C. Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts, op cit.
55 Unfortunately, China military studies have unfortunately never found a ‘legitimate’ place in US political science departments.
56 As a result, many economists specializing on China find institutional homes in business schools or the private sector.
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David Shambaugh
David Shambaugh is the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science & International Affairs; Director, China Policy Program, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, USA.