Chinese scholars must sharpen their focus on the internal conflicts reshaping the United States if they are to help Beijing navigate its rivalry with Washington, according to a prominent academic.
“Without updating our knowledge base on these issues, it will be difficult to achieve a breakthrough in constructing a new research paradigm,” he wrote in the latest edition of the Journal of the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
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To fill this role, Chinese academics should build an autonomous, China-centred system of knowledge of the US, Ni said. Researchers should first clarify “who [they] are” and “why [they] are studying the US”.
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Their research agenda should be “driven by China’s national interests and security concerns” rather than simply following the topics set by American academia. He added that Chinese research on the US remained superficial and did not offer penetrating structural insights.