Abstract
Over the course of just a few decades, China has progressed from being a relatively marginal member of the international community to a key participant in addressing economic, political and security issues at both the regional and global levels. The pace and nature of China’s ongoing ascendancy are generating serious policy concerns like the anxiety of the United States about China as a potential rival (Ikenberry 2008). The rise of China has changed the international balance of power, which could have a significant impact on the validating process of political science.
The author would like to thank Kingsley Ednay and Su Wei for their help, and the valuable remarks and discussion of the organizers and participants of the following conferences: the international conference on China’s Social Sciences in the Age of Globalization, 6–7 December 2008, Fudan University; International Forum: Academic Journals and China Studies towards the World, 3–6 July 2009, Fudan University; An International Conference on Chinese Political Studies: Theories and Methods, 25–26 September 2010, Nankai University.
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Notes
- 1.
Deng, Zhenglai. 2008-10-11/12 Keynote speech at the conference on China after the 17th Party Congress, Missouri State University, USA.
- 2.
Ren Qiang’s remarks to the international conference on China’s Social Sciences in the age of globalization, Fudan University, China, 6–7 December 2008.
- 3.
Deng, Zhenglai. 2008-10-11/12 Keynote speech.
- 4.
Wang, Gungwu’s reply to the author in Sep 2002.
- 5.
There are many questions. How does secularization meet such a need in Islamic countries? Why should Asians adopt the rigid division developed in the French Revolution? Islam holds a holistic view of state and religion while modern nation-states attempt to separate the two. Is the case of Turkey an example of the failure of a secular state? Is it the case that Confucianism cannot offer spiritual fulfillment and gave way to Buddhism? Is it correct that modern states overstate secularism at the expanse of spiritual need?
- 6.
Wang, Gungwu, ‘Comment’, in The Traditions of the University,pp. 236–7.
- 7.
Wang Gungwu’s reply at the Roundtable on Wang Gungwu’s Scholarship, 20 September 2002.
- 8.
Riker argues that historical writings can produce only wisdom and neither science nor knowledge. He attempts to develop a mathematical notion of politics and set an example for ‘political science to rise above the level of wisdom literature and indeed to join economics and psychology in the creation of genuine sciences of human behavior’, p. viii. In a response, Wang Gungwu argues that wisdom is more important than theory in the sense that wisdom is the aim while theory is the means through which we develop wisdom. Natural sciences also look for wisdom. It is wrong for social scientists to look for theory as an aim without looking for wisdom. Wang’s replies in Seminar on his scholarship on 20 Sep 2002, EAI, NUS.
- 9.
Post-modernism has stressed subjectivity, time and space, and pluralism of methods.
- 10.
Wang Gungwu’s reply to the author on 21 September 2002.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Fareed Zakaria’s interview with Wen Jiabao, Newsweek, October 6, 2008.
- 13.
Mao’s remark at the international conference on China’s Social Sciences in the age of globalization, 6–8 October 2008.
- 14.
It should be noted that a Schmittian authoritarianism is justified by another kind of uncertain order, a sovereign interpretation of a state of exception.
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He, B. (2013). The Dilemmas of China’s Political Science in the Context of the Rise of China. In: Guo, S. (eds) Political Science and Chinese Political Studies. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29590-4_12
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