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The Revival of Political Science in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2022

Zhao Baoxu  and
David Chu
Zhao Baoxu
Affiliation:
Peking University
David Chu
Affiliation:
Peking University
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Extract

As an independent basic social science, the study of politics occupies an important position among all the social sciences. In 1952, however, China abolished political science teaching and research. This was a mistake which is now being corrected. China has reestablished the field of political science in recent years.

When a historical event is shown to be mistaken, people often like to describe the reasons for its having taken place as very absurd and unimaginable, as though to demonstrate how confused people were at that time compared with how smart we are now. Such a simple attitude, however, will not help us in understanding the realities scientifically nor will it help us in learning from the lessons of history, and is therefore to be avoided.

This essay describes both objective conditions and the way people thought, both in the early 1950s and after 1976. It deals with two opposite events: first, the abolition of political science in China three decades ago, and second, its current revival.

Type
Political Science in China
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , Fall 1984 , pp. 745 - 757
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1984

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the Institute of East Asian Studies (Berkeley), particularly Robert Scalapino and the Asia Foundation (San Francisco) for facilitating my stays in California where writing and revisions were done. Thanks also to Professor Michel Oksenberg (Michigan) for his constructive comments and suggestions and Ms. Vicki Nelson for editorial assistance on an earlier draft, and to David Chu for translating and making substantive suggestions and editorial changes in successive drafts of this essay.

**

Zhao Baoxu is professor of political science and former chairman of the Department of International Politics at Peking University in the People's Republic of China, where he is also the director of the Institute of Asian and Africa Studies. A member of the executive council of the Chinese Political Science Association, Professor Zhao was most recently a visiting scholar at the Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (fall 1984 and also 1981–83) and visiting professor at the Free University of Berlin (1983–84), where he taught two courses on contemporary Chinese politics, the first PRC professor to teach in this field abroad.

***

David Chu is a sociologist and research associate at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.