China’s Country and Region Studies in a Global Perspective

The emergence of Country and Region Studies (CRS) in China reflects the country’s deepening engagement with global affairs and signals a strategic shift in the development of the social sciences. Chinese scholars are working to construct an autonomous knowledge system for CRS grounded in China’s domestic experience, critical reflections on colonialism and Cold War thinking, and interdisciplinary collaboration. This autonomy is embedded in both the inherent characteristics of area studies and the vision of ‘Global China’, which has emerged systemically from China’s participation in global governance, innovation within Chinese academia, and longstanding imbalances in global knowledge production between the West and the rest of the world. The principle of China’s CRS centers on mutual learning among civilizations, understood as a process through which knowledge is generated to promote cross-cultural understanding and exchange. Together, these elements form the basis for an autonomous Chinese CRS knowledge system and reinforce the theoretical, discursive, and human-capital foundations necessary for building a community with a shared future for humanity.