Chinese centers get to heart of the matter

Answering complex questions about china is better done in a deep, multidisciplinary environment

Just as China and its place in the world have been transformed over the past 35 years, so too has the way in which it is analyzed and assessed in theacademic world.

The country's myriad economic, social and political developments and their global implications call for an academic approach that brings together theoretical and empirical perspective from many different quarters.

Such an approach to China research, combining the profound country-specific knowledge and language skills of Sinologists with that of mainstream scholars, holds great promise. China centers offer this exciting prospect: the ability to advance understanding of China and communicate it to the world to a degree that a single-discipline approach could never hope to achieve.

To reach its full potential, such an approach requires an open outlook from all involved on the specificities of disciplines, their ambitions and tradition. Every academic has his or her own motive for engaging with China, and that in itself creates opportunities and challenges to those who want to collaborate with one another.

Not everyone is driven by a love for China, its rich cultural and historic heritage or its language. Indeed, many will not master Chinese to a level that enables them to carry out independent research.

As a result of China's internationalization, it has opened itself to research by non-Chinese speakers who rely on secondary data or research the country's engagement with their home country. They will treat China as a test bed for theories, a place where similar phenomena can be compared and contrasted, and then move on to research projects that focus on other countries.

Of course, that approach is not new, and the product is research articles in mainstream disciplinary academic journals.

China reaches beyond its borders, through, among other things, trade and investment, culturally through Confucius Institutes, and politically through institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank, meaning that it has significant impact on other countries as well as on the global economic governance structure.

Chinese foreign direct investment in the European Union and Africa has raised the kinds of questions often thrown up in academic discussion on China.

These include queries about the economic rationale and viability of investments, their impact on host economies, and the appropriate political reactions.

Impact is generated through the creation of local business links, the import of new business ideas and models, and engagement with customers and employees as well as with the institutional infrastructure in the host country. Evaluating how each one of these affects agendas requires knowledge from a range of different academic disciplines, from host-country specific knowledge to insights into previous similar developments.

Confucius Institutes have sprung up incredibly rapidly over the past decade with the main aim of offering learning and the dissemination of Chinese language and culture.

But they are also regarded as tools that the Chinese government wields to increase its global soft power.

Their development and function are thus of interest to scholars in education, culture and international relations. Similarly, assessing the impact of new financial institutions on existing global economic governance and on international relations transcends disciplines.

A spin-off of this is that deep knowledge is pooled - including knowledge about China's foreign policy and the workings of government bodies and the impact these have on areas such as political science, economics and international relations.

Another reason for the creation of China centers is of a more practical nature. Identifying academic colleagues in an institution who have common interests is often a difficult task. Even if faculties are physically close to one another, disciplinary and institutional boundaries often get in the way of communication. A center with representatives from around the university can enable cross-faculty research collaboration because it offers an initial contact point.

The variety of international relationships China enjoys today highlights the fact that a multidisciplinary approach to researching China will always be a fruitful endeavor. Whenever and wherever China centers are established to project this variety, they should be heartily welcomed.

The author is Director of the Business Confucius Institute at the Leeds University, Lecturer at the Centre for International Business and researcher at the White Rose East Asia Centre.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 09/12/2014 page9)