Western theoretical frameworks are often ill-suited for China studies, according to Chinese academics who called instead for research that was grounded in the country’s specific context.
The case for a tailored approach, bolstered by field research to correct biases and enable deeper understanding, was made at this week’s World Conference on China Studies in Shanghai, attended by hundreds of Chinese and foreign academics.
At the forum’s opening ceremony on Tuesday, Lin Shangli, president of Renmin University of China, said it was hard to interpret the transformation of non-Western countries from ancient to modern civilisations through Western logic and knowledge systems.
“Clearly, Western logic cannot explain [China] and we must return to the Chinese context itself to do so,” Lin said, giving the example of China’s governance structure, which could not be explained by Western theory because of the huge gap in social scale.
