“Advanced Research in Chinese Politics” in 2020: Building a New and Diverse Academic Community Together
“The Workshop of Advanced Research in Chinese Politics” is initiated by the School of Government in Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU), and the Research Center for Contemporary Chinese Politics of SYSU. The workshop positions itself as “diverse, inclusive, new, and advanced” and aims to build an academic community that can attract new researchers and research teams. There has been a total of six seasons of the workshop, consisting of 30 lectures which were attended by new researchers from more than twenty high-level research institutes.
Being “diverse and inclusive” represents an abundance of research topics concerning Chinese politics and the diversity of research methods. The workshop is designed to take advantage of the achievements in multiple disciplines, which allows for thought and an approach to Chinese politics through the prism of other disciplines such as economics, management, sociology, history, and law, while ultimately promoting dialogue and communication.
Being “new and advanced” does not intend to discriminate upon the grounds of age, but serves as a criterion for the research. All researchers are welcome, whether they are experienced and distinguished seniors or young talented individuals who have just started to cut their academic teeth, as long as they propose something striking and inspiring, which can be a question, a method, a perspective, insight, or even a notion and discourse.
In 2020, the workshop introduced two activities. One was “Focus on Topics, Dialogues Between Scholars”. From sixth iteration on, the workshop has started to choose specific research topics, and invite the three most reputable scholars in every corresponding field to have a conversation and demonstrate the new and advanced landscape of each topic. There were five topics this season, namely families and politics, ethnic politics, studies on the People’s Congress, labor relations, and clean governance. The keynote speakers for each topic were Zhao Yanjie, an associate researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Wei Yingjie, an associate professor from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Chen Chuanmin, an associate professor from the East China University of Political Science and Law, Li Hui, a professor from Fudan University, and Zhang Hao, an assistant professor from Renmin University of China. The guests invited for discussion were Li Lifeng, a professor from Nanjing University, Huang Zhenqian, an associate professor from China Agricultural University, Doctor Li Xiangyu from the general office of the Standing Committee of the People's Congress of Guangdong Province, Li Li, an associate professor from China University of Political Science and Law, and Su Yihui, an associate professor from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. Conversations about the five topics were intellectually stimulating.
The second activity concerned an academic seminar on “Advanced Research in Chinese Politics”. The seminar is planned to be organized every two years. This year it was held online and received strong peer support. It focused upon six research fields which were as follows: nation-state building, elite politics, state and economy, grassroots governance, political attitudes, and bureaucracy. Keynote speeches and comments were given by more than forty scholars from such renowned research institutes as Columbia University, the Ohio State University, the Free University of Berlin, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Sun Yat-sen University. They represented the new topics and achievements within relevant fields and demonstrated the advancement of contemporary Chinese political studies.
In 2021, “The Workshop of Advanced Research in Chinese Politics” will work with domestic and foreign peers in order to build an academic community for Chinese political studies. For one thing, it is essential to highlight the characteristics of contemporary Chinese political studies and give more attention to the combination of political theories and comparative political studies, which is done so to improve the level of theoretical discussions and explore the construction of theory and discourse of “Chinese governance” from a comparative analysis perspective. In addition, the workshop is designated to underline advanced research and focus upon promoting the conversation and communication among varied research methods and styles, which will in turn contribute to the academic heritage and accumulation found within Chinese political studies.
