By Jerome A. Cohen
Here is Professor Wang Gungwu’s stimulating and informative essay on “Sinology and the Rise of China.” Anything he publishes deserves our attention. I am puzzled, however, by the incompleteness of his conclusion.
Earlier in the essay, Professor Wang points out that “Deng Xiaoping’s reforms after 1978 promised a fresh start,” permitting Mainland scholars to escape the confines of the Marxist-Leninist framework to which Mao’s oppressive rule had subjected them. As a result, as he says, “a more pluralist Sinology began to emerge in the 1980s.”
In his penultimate paragraph, Professor Wang notes another, more recent, political change that bodes less well for a flourishing pluralist Sinology. As he puts it, “China is now seen by the United States as a threat to its supremacy. In such a context, the knowledge gathered by pluralist Sinology could serve as a weapon for self-defence or for intelligent offence”.
Of course, one should also point out that the United States is not the only democratic state to increasingly perceive the People’s Republic of China as a threat. This only underscores Professor Wang’s warning that in the new circumstances “Sinologists may be travelling on a road with many danger signs”.
What puzzles me, however, is that Professor Wang fails to notice the very important political changes that have taken place in China since the ascension of Xi Jinping, changes that are in large part responsible for the enhanced “China threat” perceptions abroad. Moreover, have these changes had no impact on the freedoms of Chinese scholars to engage in honest Sinology that they gradually acquired during the Deng Xiaoping era?
This is not a rhetorical question, since I do not know the answer. But I do know the severe negative impact that the current “New Era” in China has made by further restricting the freedoms of Chinese scholars in my own field of law, including the legal history of their own country. This makes me suspect that the danger signs for Sinologists may be more numerous than Professor Wang has acknowledged.