New book offers global academic insights into China topics

The inaugural volume of the book series, The Digest of Chinese Studies, has recently been published. This book series aims to excerpt and translate academic achievements in the field of China studies from dozens of high-quality foreign humanities journals, while also including book reviews and discussions on various viewpoints related to the subject matter.

A total of 46 essays and book reviews have been compiled in the first issue, focusing mainly on the politics, economics, diplomacy, ecology, culture and art of ancient and modern Chinese societies. The philosophy of translation, as well as the translation of philosophical works into Chinese, has also been discussed.

Studies into historical phenomena — such as Chinese Bronze Age political economies; the political power of the great-clan eunuchs at court of the late Tang Dynasty (618-907); silver supply, as well as the production, diversity and global consumption of paper, in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties; the publication and circulation of Qing court gazettes; and the gift exchanges between royal courts of China and Europe in the 17th to 18th centuries — have demonstrated the creativity, depth and research interest of the field of Sinology in recent years, the book introduction says.

Elizabeth J. Perry, expert on Chinese politics and history and former director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, wrote a recommendation for the issue, noting that it compiles articles from leading journals worldwide in a concise and readable manner. These articles present frontier academic achievements exploring various periods and topics related to China.

She mentions that she would recommend it to both novice students and experienced scholars.

Liu Dong, chief editor of the book series and dean of Zhejiang University's Sino-West Academy in Hangzhou, has long been dedicated to fostering dialogue between scholars in the fields of domestic Chinese studies and Sinology.

In 1988, he initiated the Overseas Chinese Studies series, which has by far translated and introduced around 250 influential academic monographs, including representative works of Sinologists like John King Fairbank, Frederic Evans Wakeman Jr., Stephen Owen, Yuzo Mizoguchi and Yoshinobu Shiba.

During the book launch held at Zhejiang University on Tuesday, Liu said the release fulfilled a long-term wish. He points out that while the Chinese academic community has made progress in translating and introducing works of Sinology, few are able to keep up with the latest, innovative papers from their foreign counterparts.

However, staying abreast of international academic trends helps the community broaden the knowledge horizon, enhance academic intuition and the ability to associate ideas, and as he puts it, "know whose door to knock on when determined to delve into a specific field of study".

To compile such a book series, Liu has been leading an editorial team of 10 young scholars from home and abroad to sift through some 60 journals on a regular basis and select high-quality papers that exhibit innovative academic ideas, problem awareness and distinctive research approaches.

The series is published by Horizon Books, a branch of the Shanghai People's Publishing House. Wen Zeyuan, president of the publishing house, explains that the book series aims to enrich domestic scholars' understanding of overseas academic trends, bridging the gap caused by the delayed release of translated monographs compared to academic papers.

It also demonstrates the knowledge and insights of local scholars and the dedicated efforts of the editorial team, he adds.

During the book launch, humanities scholars from multiple universities and academic disciplines, along with representatives from academic journals and publishers, discussed how to promote academic exchanges, improve Chinese scholars' academic judgment and sensitivity, and the significance of a book series like this that's based on human curation — intensive reading, selection and compiling — in the age of artificial intelligence.

Yao Dali, professor at the Institute for Chinese Historical Geography Studies, Fudan University, says that the efforts to accelerate the establishment of an independent knowledge system for Chinese philosophy and social sciences have to build upon the wealth of shared human knowledge, indicating the need to remain open to knowledge of all domains of natural sciences, social sciences and humanities disciplines in the external world.

According to Horizon Books, another two to three issues of the book series are scheduled to be released later this year.