Journal Of Contemporary China And The Development Of American Chinese Studies(1997-2016)

Since the Second World War,most scholars of Contemporary Chinese studies in the Western countries?regions?,including the US,were confined to area studies and influenced heavily by the so-called sinology tradition that was started in Europe during the 19th century.This tradition sees china as an isolated,sole subject,and stresses on China's unique history and culture but ignores the social science methodology and comparative approaches in the study of China.As a result,the previous sinologists mostly focused on historical and linguistic studies of China and avoided comprehensive analysis of contemporary China's political,economic,social,and foreign affairs,and were not interested in applying social science methodology to the study of China.Since the 1980s.social science disciplines have begun to integrate into American Chinese studies,and the new generation scholars have tried to apply and develop new research methods,concepts or paradigms to study China.It is at an exciting and opportune time,in the early 1990s,Journal of Contemporary China was born to fill the voids in the Western studies of contemporary China.However,analyzing the western contemporanry China before 1990s,there are still some problems.The first was the separation of conventional sinology and modern social science;The second was the separation of Chinese academic study and political study;the third is the separation of Western studies of China and the increasingly sophisticated and rich studies of China by non-Western scholars,and The Journal of Contemporary China built three bridges to resolve these problems.This dissertation summarizes the conditions of Chinese studies in America,focusing on the articles published in Journal of Contemporary China during 1997 to 2016.This dissertation is divided into five parts.Introduction part includes the literature review,significance of the paper,and research method.Chapter one introduces the profile of Journal of Contemporary China.including the background,origin,and the cause of establishing the journal,Chapter Two introduces the research group by analyzing their countries,departments.occupations,titles and research fields.so as to summarizes the rules and characteristics of the development of American Chinese studies:Chapter Three classifies all the articles of Journal of Contemporary China during 1997 to 2016 in terms of subjects,so as to summarizes the characteristics and trends of contemporary American Chinese study by the number and proportion of articles in terms of the subjects,and chooses the "Sino-U.S.Relation" theme to make a content analysis.Chapter Four analyzes the characteristics and deficiencies of Journal of Contemporary China.Through this dissertation,some contributions could be offered.Firstly,through the analysis of the The Journal of Contemporary China catalog,the status of the author team and the articles under the important themes,considering the specific international environments,academic backgrounds and the analysis of the situation of China and the United States,the development of American contemporary Chinese studies from 1999 to 2016 can be shown.Secondly,this dissertation summarizes the characteristics of the contemporary Chinese study in the US.which is comprehensiveness,inter-discipline and attention to realistic issues of contemporary China,and shows the authority and influence of The Journal of Contemporary China.Thirdly,this dissertation analyzes the basic situation and the main content of The Journal of Contemporary China from both general and specific perspectives,so as to make domestic academic community have better understanding of this journal,which is helpful for enhancing domestic and foreign academic mutual understanding and exchange.