Sinology Between China and Europe

From the Cold War to the New Era

Abstract

During the past eight decades, European sinology has followed a complex trajectory shaped by shifting political circumstances both within China, and in Europe, including the East-West divide during the Cold War: from limited access to China and its sources, through a period of openness and close collaboration, to the recent re-emergence of interference of the Chinese state in independent research. The case of both PRC and Czechoslovakia illustrate well the changing fortunes for scholarship dependent on top-down centralized decision making in the party-state institutional setting. With this history on mind, I will then present Xi Jinping’s most recent program of “building up independent knowledge system” in China and related policies reviving Party control in Chinese humanities and social sciences and consider the growing risk that political considerations will once again exert a direct and detrimental influence on research in the humanities and social sciences within China, as well as on international scholarship and knowledge production about China. 

過去八十年間，歐洲漢學的發展軌跡深受中國內部演變、歐洲政治變遷及冷戰時期東西方對峙等多重因素的交織影響：早期歐洲學界在進入中國、獲取研究資料方面多受限制，改革開放後雙方交流日趨頻繁、合作不斷深化，而近年來，中國政府對學術研究的幹預再度加深。中華人民共和國與捷克斯洛伐克的歷史經驗表明，在黨國體制下，依賴自上而下集中決策的學術研究極易隨政治氣候的變遷而起伏。循此脈絡，本文考察習近平近期提出的“建構中國自主的知識體系”政策綱領及相關管控舉措，分析其如何可能再度強化對中國境內人文社會科學研究的直接幹預，並進而探討其對國際學界之中國研究與知識生產可能造成的負面影響。