Читать книгу The World of Political Science - Группа авторов - Страница 24

Chinese political science has been moving forward step by step. But the fundamental problem of not deviating from party orthodoxy when empirical realities seem to point in the direction of modifying it does persist. Also empirical research has not been encouraged very much, since it is somehow difficult to get permission from authorities to do large scale survey research. And financial resources to execute such survey research normally are not easily available. I share the view with Guo Dingping that the following three bold reforms of political studies would help ameliorate these weaknesses and difficulties. First, is the internationalization of Chinese political science. The direction of enhancing those opportunities for Chinese political scientists to exchange their views with foreign academics and to join joint research projects with foreign academics must be emphasized. Second, it would constitute the professionalization of Chinese political science. Those with ‘redness’ but not much expertise in political science will decrease sooner or later. Solid graduate programs in political science will help accelerate the trend. Third, would be the diversification of Chinese political science. The narrow-minded preoccupation of political science with Chinese characteristics should be deemphasized; instead bringing in more comparative perspectives to reach a balanced understanding of Chinese politics and comprehending more universal trends that are observed across nations would help Chinese political science to attain a higher reputation.

At a glance the penetration of American political science in China has been pervasive. Its vocabulary has been popularized through their academic writings. This cultural thirst for democratic vocabulary has been very strong. Their thirst for communist vocabulary was very strong in the 1910s through 1930s when the Japanese translation of Western, including communist, philosophy and social sciences was imported by China’s young students into Japan and converted into Chinese vocabulary. Communism and the communist party, for instance, were first created by Japanese as the kanji (Chinese-idiograph)-based Japanese words. Reinforcing this trend of Americanization are two influences: education and institutions. As in Korea, privileged elites keep sending to and educating their children in the United States. Chinese Universities have been undergoing tremendous reforms modeled after famous American institutions. Gigantic institutions modeled after the Kennedy School of Government and the Woodrow Wilson Center have been set up in a number of places like Peking and Fudan.

Nevertheless, reading through some of these books does not tell you that China will soon abandon the Communist Party and communist rule. Instead, either by recounting philosophical criticisms of Western style democracy or advising careful and cautious thinking about Western democracy on the basis of empirical conditions, China is still following its own path despite the way in which it has imported the American political science vocabulary en masse. It is not quite “Teaching by Negative Example”. Instead, it is saying something more like “let us prepare for things that might come to us as well,” whether it is solid democracy or full-fledged capitalism. Although guided heavily by American concepts, components of empirical analysis tend to be weaker. Introducing concepts and methods of American political science may sometimes be easier to characterize than describing their importation. Also, at times it might be better to characterize this endeavor as the Chinese investigation of what’s going on in foreign countries, through an American looking-glass. They have a substantial number of books on politics abroad.