Continuing a process of mutual enrichment

Three transformative events in 1978 left an enduring mark on the nation, according to He Peizhong, a leading China Studies scholar.

The first was the launch of the reform and opening-up drive; the second, Deng Xiaoping's articulation of the "practice is the sole criterion for testing truth" principle, he said.

"But there was a third event — equally remarkable and profoundly influential — though far less known," he added. "That was the founding of the International China Studies Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences," said the 73-year-old, who serves as the center's honorary director.

"The center marked our first systematic effort, since the founding of the People's Republic of China, to examine how the country-has been studied abroad — a tradition dating back to the 16th century and reaching a height during the Cold War, when geopolitics preoccupied global decision-makers," he continued.

But why 1978? The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which had gravely disrupted the nation, had ended less than two years earlier, he pointed out

"China stood at the edge of renewal — brimming with potential yet shadowed by historical skepticism and self-doubt, especially among its intellectuals. By turning our gaze outward to see how others had sought to understand us, we, in turn, became more self-aware and gained a clearer understanding of ourselves."

A few months later, in February 1979, eight students from the United States arrived in Beijing via Tokyo — the first group allowed to study in China since 1949. Among them was Thomas Gold, now a retired sociology professor from the University of California, Berkeley.

Studying modern Chinese literature at Fudan University in Shanghai, Gold stepped into his familiar territory of social studies when he started talking to people who congregated in the People's Square, not far from the city's famous Bund.

"They were zhi qing," Gold said, citing a term for educated youths sent to the countryside for "re-education" during the Cultural Revolution. Thousands of them had returned to the cities, having endured years of hardship. Yet they remained "hopeful and ready to do whatever circumstances allowed, to contribute to their country", he said.

Gold, who's in Shanghai for the World Conference on China Studies on Tuesday and Wednesday, said the most effective way to understand contemporary China is "to learn the language well enough to converse directly with Chinese people, to live in China for an extended period, to travel widely, and to experience a Chinese workplace — basically what we did back then".

Those who started in the 1950s and 60s, including his mentor, the distinguished US sociologist and East Asian scholar Ezra Vogel, often had to conduct field research with Chinese people outside the mainland, mostly in Hong Kong, due to Cold War tensions.

"When my father was able to go to the mainland in 1973, on an academic exchange following president Richard Nixon's historic visit to China, it was like finally meeting someone with whom you had been on the phone for years, someone you really want a relationship with," said David Vogel, son of Ezra Vogel, who was the director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University in the 1970s and 90s. In 2011, aged 81, Ezra Vogel published his definitive book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China.

"Chinese students and scholars should be familiar with how Westerners conduct research on contemporary China," said Gold. "Not everyone sees the world the same way, and even if we disagree, it is important to understand the world view of others and how it was shaped and maintained over time," he said.

He Peizhong explained that it was precisely this realization that led many Chinese institutions of higher learning — most notably Beijing Foreign Studies University and East China Normal University — to establish research centers dedicated to China Studies beginning in the mid-1990s.

"It's like holding up a mirror to oneself. Yet we gradually saw that this mirror — or the lens through which China was filtered by external assumptions and frameworks — could bend the image like a convex or concave, often resulting in a distorted portrayal of the country," said He.

"That was when Chinese scholars became acutely aware of their own role in defining Sinology, or China Studies, a field long dominated by outsiders, from Jesuit missionaries to Western academics."

However, that doesn't mean China Studies should be Sinocentric, added He, who sees "mutual learning" as the foundation of the field — the only way for the knowledge it generates to truly contribute to global development.

"It's not a binary but a continuum — a process of mutual enrichment. While foreign research can reveal sources we might have overlooked and broaden our perspective, their direct engagement with China and its scholars helps bridge gaps that might otherwise solidify into stereotypes," He said.