American Studies of Contemporary China

David L. Shambaugh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315484556
• Subtopic: Historiography
• Index: Social Sciences

Examines the historical evolution of contemporary China studies in the United States, reflecting the growth and maturation of the field since the Communist Party seized power in 1949.

Part I
The Evolution of Contemporary China Studies in the United States

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Introduction

David Shambaugh

In 1971, on the eve of the Sino-American opening, Professor John Lindbeck surveyed contemporary China studies in the United States and lamented the impact of the Cold War on scholarly understanding of the post-1949 China.¹ Isolation had produced ignorance, he argued. Lindbeck admonished the China studies community for:

the superficial and abstract quality of much research. Less than full interpretive use is made of available data. Virtually no American scholars who are not of Chinese origin are bilingual; not more than two or three can write a scholarly article in Chinese for a Chinese publication; less than a handful have been students in a Chinese academic institution working in competition with Chinese students; and few have any sense of ease in a wholly Chinese environment.²

Professor Lindbeck unfortunately did not live to witness the dramatic opening of a new era of Sino-American relations in 1971–72, nor the extensive development of scholarly exchange between China and the United States following diplomatic recognition in 1979, even though he had been centrally involved in laying the institutional groundwork for those exchanges in anticipation of an eventual change in the diplomatic climate. His assessment of China studies in the United States today would no doubt be quite different, since published research is now more interpretive and grounded in primary data drawn from field research; a majority of American scholars of non-Chinese origin can claim competence in Mandarin Chinese and some in regional dialects; many have published in Chinese learned journals; every year American students study in Chinese universities and American sinologists conduct advanced scholarly research in situ; and most China specialists now live and move with relative ease in Chinese society.

This volume is testimony to the dramatic development of contemporary (i.e., post-1949) China studies in the United States since Lindbeck’s earlier assessment. The essays in this volume reflect the growth and maturation of the field between the 1970s and the 1980s, and in a real sense represent the harvest of efforts undertaken by Lindbeck, John King Fairbank, A. Doak Barnett, Benjamin Schwartz, Alexander Eckstein, Robert Scalapino, John Lewis, Allen S. Whiting, G. William Skinner, and other senior scholars to build the field of contemporary China studies in the United States—at a time when domestic and international politics were often inhospitable to the study of “Communist China.” Many of the contributors to this volume, in fact, personify the impact of these pioneers insofar as many were trained by them directly or by their students.

Contemporary China Studies in the United States is the product of a multiyear project that began with the conference “Perspectives on the American Study of Contemporary China,” which was generously supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The conference was sponsored by the Asia Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center and convened at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, Wye Woods Conference Center, in July 1988. More than thirty leading scholars and professionals in the China field participated in three days of provocative and reflective discussion at the conference. Subsequently, others were invited to contribute to this volume, and all the chapters contained herein reflect prodigious effort and multiple drafts by the contributors.

This volume is far from the first effort to take stock of trends and the state of the China field in the United States.³ Some previous discussions were highly polemical and critical of scholars and scholarship on modern and contemporary China. Members of the field were taken to task for excessive political bias—for being either too sympathetic toward Chinese socialism or condemnatory of the Communist regime and its many shortcomings. To be certain, postwar Chinese studies in the United States germinated in a political hothouse; the Korean War, Vietnam War, and the entire Cold War provided a highly charged atmosphere that had direct and far-reaching impact on the field.

Many previous surveys also debated paradigmatic tendencies in the field. Paradigms and politics became intertwined. Several observers sharply criticized American ethnocentrism in the analysis of China and the exaggeration of the Western “impact” on China. Some believed that American values were inappropriately applied to China, while others saw a failure to subject China to vigorous standards of international behavior. In the wake of the 1989 Beijing demonstrations and killings, as part of the general introspective gestalt sweeping the field, many China specialists were accused of wishful thinking about the chances for reform and reformers in China, a sympathy that supposedly blinded them to recognizing either the pent-up frustrations in society or the brutal nature of the regime.

Then there are those critics who believe the academic field of Chinese studies in the United States to be a self-perpetuating elite, an elitism supposedly sustained by an informal conspiracy of leading professors and the principal funding and scholarly exchange organizations. The impact that China specialists have had on American polity toward Asia has also long been a subject of speculation and a target of criticism.

In short, there has been no dearth of criticism, introspection, and hyperbole in the field of contemporary China studies in the United States. This volume does not seek to evaluate the field in such terms. Rather, it seeks a dispassionate examination of the historical evolution of contemporary China studies in the United States, to take stock of the state of the field in the 1990s, and assess the future trends and challenges for development toward the twenty-first century.

Specifically, Contemporary China Studies in the United States addresses five principal areas of inquiry: 1) the overall evolution of scholarship on contemporary China; 2) disciplinary surveys of the state of the field in the social sciences and humanities; 3) the professional community of contemporary China specialists in the United States; 4) aspects of infrastructural development; and 5) the future challenges to the field. The volume is organized according to these principal foci of inquiry and each raises particular themes, which are summarized below.

Thematic Highlights

Harry Harding opens with an essay on the postwar evolution of contemporary China studies in the United States that helps to place subsequent chapters—particularly those in Part II—in historical perspective. Harding clearly conveys the institutional growth and intellectual maturation of the academic study of China. He notes that the field has now acquired the empirical rigor and analytical perspective that Lindbeck previously found lacking. He writes that despite considerable cross-fertilization between area specialists and academic disciplines in the United States, and the placing of China in comparative perspective, a deep-seated tension between China area studies and parent disciplines still lingers. Despite Harding’s generally upbeat diagnosis of contemporary China studies in the United States, he cautions that the field’s increased empiricism and focus on increasingly smaller units of analysis may have resulted in the loss of a cumulative, syncretic, and macro perspective on a rapidly changing China. He warns that increased specificity ought not to come at the cost of novel interpretation and the ability to generalize. Harding concludes by calling for increased collaborative research and scholarly cooperation across disciplines, between countries (including with Chinese scholars), and with those in public policy circles.

The five chapters that comprise Part II of the volume offer state-of-the-field assessments of research trends in key disciplines related to contemporary China studies. Each is real testimony to the enormous impact that the opening of China has had on American studies of Chinese society, the humanities, economy, politics, and foreign and defense policy. All the contributors to this section take note of how the increased amount and variety of data available, and the opportunities for field research in situ, have affected positively their areas of study. Thus field research opportunities have resulted in an enriched sense of China’s diversity and complexity; consequently each discipline reflects increased nuance and empiricism. To be sure, securing research access in China has not been an easy process and continues to be fraught with problems that do not necessarily confront scholars working in other countries. No sooner had China opened to American researchers than the Mosher incident resulted in a four-year-long moratorium on rural fieldwork.⁴ Opportunities for rural fieldwork subsequently resumed and have produced some path-breaking studies on rural social change.⁵ Archival research on the contemporary period remains impossible for foreign scholars because the archives of the Communist Party, the State Council, the military, and the provinces remain off-limits. Even scholars of the Republican period continue to have only partial access to the No. 2 Historical Archive in Nanjing. And post-Tiananmen policies of the State Education Commission cast much doubt over the potential for collaborative research between American and Chinese scholars.⁶ A wide variety of collaborative social science projects involving millions of dollars of research funding were brought to a halt in 1990 after the intervention of the State Educational Commission (and certain Politburo members). Still, the overall impact that the opening of China and opportunities for field research have had on American scholarship has been profound and extensive. This is reflected in each chapter in Part II.

Thomas B. Gold surveys sociological and anthropological studies of Chinese society and finds that while these disciplines have perhaps benefited most from field research, they have concomitantly been particularly vulnerable to the political vagaries that too often govern such access. Participant observation, interviewing, survey research, and other socioanthropological methods previously utilized in other developing societies were, after 1979, extended to the Chinese mainland and have informed many significant studies of rural, urban, and non-Han China. In some cases (particularly demography) unprecedented data have been collected and analyzed by foreign scholars, often in collaboration with Chinese colleagues. The impact of reform policies on different social strata has been studied extensively, and in general all the social sciences have become more involved in understanding the nexus between state and society. As sociologists, demographers, and anthropologists explore the Chinese countryside and urban neighborhoods, one of the principal findings has been that of continuity with presocialist society. In all fields of twentieth-century China, the 1949 divide is proving an increasingly artificial one. To be sure, in Chinese society the unique features of socialist organization have produced new social norms and behavior,⁷ but the tenacity of traditional Chinese social hierarchies, ethnic identity, and religiosity have been a striking conclusion for many social scientists studying Chinese society. Gold also notes the long-standing (and continuing) importance of informant-based research in Hong Kong, as well as the need to compare social change in “Greater China.”

Anthony J. Kane focuses primarily on the American study of Chinese literature, but he also addresses research on China’s intelligentsia more generally. He aptly identifies the resurgence of less-political literary expression in the post-Mao era and the impact that this literature has had on foreign understanding of Chinese society during and after Mao’s lifetime. Kane takes note ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Part I. The Evolution of Contemporary China Studies in the United States
• Part II. Disciplinary Surveys
• Part III. The American China Studies Community
• Part IV. Infrastructure
• Part V. Epilogue
• Contributors
• Index