Abstract
Why it is difficult to form a China-centric methodology? Although China-centered studies are called for by European or North American writers critical of mainstream China studies, the China-centered approach is not particularly evident in published work. Responses from overseas Chinese writers reveal at least two kinds of China-centrism: one based on the country’s development needs, to which pre-1949 history is irrelevant, and another embedded in Chinese history and cultural tradition, the historiography of which sees the span of 60 decades since 1949 as trivial. Both approaches, in effect, are opposed to relegating China to another case of general propositions derived from the mainstream agenda and its critics. They have yet to give birth to an epistemic community based on a nascent China-centric consciousness. This chapter demonstrates that China studies as practiced by overseas Chinese scholars is political and value laden, each scholar embedded in an epistemological context. In the future, China studies in China can serve as a possible point of integration, albeit remaining political in nature.
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Notes
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© 2013 Chih-yu Shih
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Shih, Cy. (2013). Global Chinese: Contending Approaches to Defending Chineseness. In: Sinicizing International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137289452_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137289452_5
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