China Studies: a giant leap in Olympic year

The University of Oxford China Centre, launched in May, has taken up residence in St Hugh’s College, while fundraising begins in earnest to create a purpose-built centre there. This year, the first students start a pioneering one-year MSc in Modern Chinese Studies. These are exciting times for the study of China at Oxford, building on more than 300 years of history and a world-class reputation. 

The University is already a world-leading centre for scholarship on China: pre-modern, modern and contemporary. The new centre aims to provide a focus for China-related study across the University, play a leading role in strengthening Oxford’s relationship with China and extend partnerships with other centres of scholarship in Chinese Studies worldwide.

Oxford can trace its links with China back to the 17th century, when the Bodleian Library acquired its first Chinese printed book and the University welcomed its first Chinese visitor (Shen Fuzong, who came to catalogue the Bodleian’s Chinese holdings). Today, there are more than 40 academics in the social sciences and humanities alone at Oxford whose research is on China. China-focused research is also represented in medicine and public health, engineering science, natural history, earth sciences, business and the environment. The University’s largest-scale involvement in China is the longstanding work there on chronic diseases such as heart attack, stroke and cancer by Oxford’s Clinical Trial Service Unit. There are scientific collaborations on the sustainability of the Lower Yellow River, fossil assemblages in the Yunnan Province and desert geomorphology and climate change; economists working on issues such as public finance and public sector reform and other key issues in contemporary China; and rapidly growing strengths in international relations, history, anthropology and politics, amongst others. ‘Our brief’, says Dr Frank Pieke, the Director of Oxford’s Institute for Chinese Studies and of the new China Centre, ‘is coordinating and facilitating the network of people across the University who work on and in China.’

A first group of scholars working on contemporary China has already moved to St Hugh’s in anticipation of the college being the site of a new building for the China Centre. Fundraising is under way and Dr Pieke hopes it will be up and running by 2011. The leadership provided by Dame Jessica Rawson (Warden of Merton College and Professor of Chinese Art and Archaeology), Vivienne Shue (Professor of Contemporary China) and Dr Pieke has secured a rapid expansion in the number of posts in Chinese Studies at Oxford. The new centre will build on that, seeking out new research and endowment funding to build on the recent success the University has had in raising external monies. This includes a 1999 Leverhulme Foundation grant to Professor Rawson, which established the Contemporary China Studies Programme at Oxford; a 2006 HEFCE, ESRC and AHRC grant awarded to Dr Pieke to set up the British Inter-university China Centre with the universities of Bristol and Manchester; and the 2007 Leverhulme Foundation research leadership award to  Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China, for a five-year interdisciplinary research project on the Sino-Japanese War.

The centre will also aim to generate scholarships for both post- and undergraduates, and to organise events. What it won’t do, says Dr Pieke, is have its own academic post-holders: ‘We will have people in the building and with connections to the centre who have posts in other parts of the University. But we want to promote the study of China in the mainstream, so where we help to create new posts they will be in departments, faculties and colleges of the University. That is the whole point. We would like to reach a stage where China is part of what every department of the University does.’

The new centre will also support Oxford’s growing teaching portfolio on the study of China. The most recent addition is the new one-year MSc in Modern Chinese Studies. No previous study of China is required, so the course is attracting first-time students to the subject. The new MSc joins the two-year MPhil in Modern Chinese Studies which focuses on Chinese language and the society, politics, economics and history of modern China. Says Dr Pieke: ‘The two courses are run in tandem by the same team, although in different departments. Together they are attracting around 30 students, 15–20 for the new MSc and 10–12 for the MPhil. They are intended as a pathway to DPhil work, although some students will do one of the Master’s as a stand-alone.’

As recruitment to these courses increases postgraduate numbers, so too does the number of undergraduates studying China. Around 50 students now take the BA in Oriental Studies (Chinese), with many more taking other China-focused options. Oxford is also a leader in the study of Chinese as a foreign language. The Centre for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language launched in 1998, and initially focused on creating web or CD-assisted programmes, but it has developed and now offers part online, part Oxford-taught programmes. ‘It is’, explains Dr Pieke, ‘one of the most cutting-edge centres of its kind. It is becoming ever more important, and is reaching out to other universities to help develop best practice.’

Dr Pieke was speaking as the 2008 Beijing Olympics came to a close, after two weeks with China in the spotlight of world attention. ‘Now,’ he says ‘people will be even more convinced of China’s importance and its place in the mainstream of world affairs.’ With its new China Centre, the University will be well placed to respond to the increasing demand that promises.