Introduction

Abstract

From July 5 to 7, 2021, the second “Tsinghua Area Studies Forum” with “Areas of the World and the World in Areas” as its theme, was held by the Institute for International and Area Studies (IIAS) at Tsinghua University in Beijing. One hundred and forty-four scholars from 13 countries and 36 universities and research institutions around the world attended the conference.

From July 5 to 7, 2021, the second “Tsinghua Area Studies Forum” with “Areas of the World and the World in Areas” as its theme, was held by the Institute for International and Area Studies (IIAS) at Tsinghua University in Beijing. One hundred and forty-four scholars from 13 countries and 36 universities and research institutions around the world attended the conference. Due to the impact of COVID-19, the conference was organized combining online and offline sessions, with six panels based on different regions and one forum for public issues. This is another big event for scholars in international and regional studies, following the first Area Studies Forum in July 2019 (themed “Innovative Approaches to Common Challenges in Asia, Africa and Latin America”). I was honored to be invited to attend the conference and deliver the keynote speech on “Area Studies from a Historical Perspective”. I was much impressed by the scale, atmosphere and content of the conference.

Seventy-nine papers were presented by scholars from various countries, 17 of which were from the Institute for International and Area Studies at Tsinghua. By the end of the forum, 11 papers were selected by the organizing committee as excellent papers and were compiled into this collection:

Countries and Regions: Connection in Dynamics. (Is this a sub-heading?) The proceedings are divided into five chapters, which cover modules like analyzing international and regional issues from the perspective of global linkages and cross-regional linkages (regions in the world) and discussing internal issues such as national governance, ethnicity, economy, and civil war, using the nation-state as the unit of analysis (the world in the region).

The two papers in the first chapter, entitled Immigration and Cross-Border Ethnic Mobility Studies, attempt to break away from the established approach of using the nation-state as the unit of analysis and turn to highlight the significance and impact of immigration and cross-border ethnic mobility on the construction of the nation-state.

The paper from Adam Hanieh, Professor at the University of Exeter in the UK, Area Studies Approaches and Suggestions to the New Regional Dynamics in the Middle East, identifies the driving factors behind the current Middle East's multiplicity, plurality and contradictions: the emergence of new political confrontations on the one hand and the reconfiguration of trade, financial and investment flows on the other, which are closely related. The author argues that new methodological approaches are needed to understand current issues in the Middle East, so as to go beyond the traditional methodological constraints imposed by competing nationalisms, geographical insularity and discipline-centrism. After reviewing long-standing traditional approaches to “area studies”, the author identifies three key methodological issues that are conducive to the understanding of current issues in the Middle East: (1) pay more attention to the various phenomena of cross-border ethnic flows, which not only break nation-state centric analysis but also overturn previous thinking about social processes in the Middle East; (2) pay closer attention to the historical processes of border and boundary changes and cross-border flows in the Middle East, which have contributed in powerful ways (often unexpectedly and imperceptibly) to changes at the national and regional levels; and (3) reflect on the complementary relationship between regional processes in the Middle East and the global situation in the study.

In their paper entitled On the Construction Kazakhstan’s National State from the Factor of “Immigration” between Kazakhstan and Russia, Dan Yang and Pan Zhiping, lecturer at Xinjiang University and researcher at Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, respectively, examined the history and reality of Russian immigration to Kazakhstan in an attempt to show the impact of Russian immigration on the construction of the Kazakh national state. The authors pointed out that the construction of modern Kazakhstan's statehood, as the largest monolithic nation-state in Central Asia, has been hampered by the “immigration” from the northern border areas, where the “Russian-speaking” Slavs have historically had a profound impact on the economy, culture, production, and life of the Kazakh steppe, while the nomadic nature of the early Kazakh tribes left the steppe's indigenous communities with no real concept of the “border”. Russia's geopolitical outlook to the east penetrated the steppes, and its natural geographical advantage rapidly pushed the boundaries between “people” and “land” into the Central Asian hinterland. Throughout the process of conquest, domination, reform, and development, the Slavs gradually influenced and changed the identity and national boundaries of the Turkic peoples. However, in the course of agricultural capitalization and the colonization of the frontier, a “national consciousness” gradually developed among the nomadic tribes of the Kazakh steppe. It was not until the Leninist period, when the frontier masses involved in the proletarian struggle were granted the “right of national self-determination”, that the demand for autonomy of the southern frontier regions in Russia became the main driving force in determining the Kazakh–Russian border. Due to historical factors, the border between the two countries did not play the role of borders until the years following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The authors argue that the influence of the “immigration factor” has been present throughout the process of nation-building, from the Kazakh Khanate in the Tsarist era to the Republic of Kazakhstan, with the border being the most direct manifestation and identity problem the most serious challenge. The path of Kazakhstan's development has also been influenced to a greater or lesser extent by the following ideology: the Russian Empire era was dominated by colonialist “reclamation theory”, and the Soviet era featured an attempt of “national self-determination” and Russian Marxist national equality, while contemporary immigration is completely determined by the country's policy guidelines and political system trends. Thirty years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan has solved the border issue through relentless efforts while maintaining friendly relations with Russia. However, from the perspective of “identity”, Kazakhstan's national (modern) state-building has not completely deviated from being a “unitary nation-state”. As a de facto multi-ethnic country, Kazakhstan needs to face the next challenge, which is about how to continue to build a “national” identity while balancing the relationship between domestic ethnic minorities and the main ethnic groups.

Two papers in Chapter Two, entitled International Factors in National Development Model, presented insights on the influence of international factors in the national development process of Madagascar and Panama respectively.

The paper The Rise of Power and the Evolution of Human Geography in the Slave Trade in Madagascar by Xiong Xinghan, assistant professor at the Institute for International and Area Studies, aims to explain two strange phenomena in the state formation of Madagascar from the perspective of human geography: (1) Slave trade is a highly destructive business activity that drains populations, undermines social trust, and intensifies communal conflict. In this process, however, the Imerina Kingdom emerged as a powerful and dominating local authority from the destructive force of the slave trade. (2) Since the Europe-dominated slave trade depends (depended?) much on maritime transportation, it is reasonable to expect a shift of the political and economic center to the coastal area. However, the emerging regime and human geography pattern of the slave trade in Madagascar are (were?) inland-centered. The author explained that the rulers of the Imerina Kingdom have creatively turned social crisis and ethnic conflict into favorable conditions for their own expansion, by organically combining the Hasina cultural system with slave trade activities, and finally achieved cultural integration, political regime, and military conquest (do you mean political regime conquest and military conquest?) over other ethnic groups in Madagascar. By comparing the inland human-geographical pattern formed in the Madagascar slave trade with the shift of the political and economic center of West Africa to the coast in the transatlantic slave trade, the author pointed out that the rapid development of the coastal areas of the African continent, due to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, has its own historical and geographical particularity. Since the Great Voyage Age was initiated, the integrated geographical, humanistic, economic, technological, and other factors in the Americas, Africa, and Europe jointly created unique transatlantic slave trade activity. Its huge size triggered the shift of Africa's political and economic center from the interior to the coast, while the small-scale slave trade in Madagascar on the existing human geography of the island merely produced subordinate influence, which served as a booster in the formation of the Imerina Kingdom as an inland human geography space, but is influential enough to reshape the inland human-geographical pattern of Madagascar.

The paper From Protectorate to Autonomy: A Century-long Exploration of Panama’s National Development Model by Zhang Song, a Ph.D. candidate at the Center for Latin America Studies of Shanghai University gives an introduction to the changes in Panama's economic development model over the past 100 years. After the completion of the Panama Canal, the United States completely dominated all the affairs including capital, technology, labor, and materials there. Whatever actions the United States took, Panama just followed suit. Panama was an independent state in name only, and was even regarded as “just an annex to the Canal Zone”. Under the leadership of General Omar Torrijos Herrera from 1968 to 1981, Panama evaded the advice of American and international institutes’ economists, whose focuses were on the industrial, agricultural, and mining development. Panama turned to maximize its own geographical advantages to build a service-oriented economy, which was fully integrated into the global commerce, manufacturing, labor, and financial markets with the Canal as its axis. Panama's economy began to take off from then on, but it also became a thorn in the side of the United States. The United States attacked and sanctioned Panama in politics, economy, and public opinion in order to overthrow the Noriega regime. Noriega was labeled a villain and dictator engaged in drug trafficking, money laundering, human trafficking, and arms smuggling. In late 1989, the United States finally launched a brazen invasion of Panama. With diplomatic relations with the United States restored in the early 1990s, Panama gradually regained stability and resumed the previous development model. Its economy rebounded quickly with the recovery of foreign investments and trade once sanctions were lifted. Panama has achieved sustainable development in the long term and has grown from being a protectorate, which was forced to ally with the United States, to a global maritime leader, winning the nickname of “Singapore of the Americas”. As proved by history, it turned out to be successful for Panama to formulate its own development model by utilizing its geographical advantages of the Canal.

The two papers in Chapter Three, entitled New Technology Practices in National Governance, summarize the experiences of India and Thailand in harnessing newly emerging technologies for economic growth and political governance.

The paper National Digital Development Strategy and Its Practice in India by Zhang Li, associate professor, and Hu Dayi, Master’s student at the Institute of South Asian Studies, Sichuan University, analyzes the formulation and effectiveness of India's digital strategy by constructing a digital development strategy model for developing countries from the supply side perspective. This model evaluated three role-players—government, private sector, and transnational capital—and pointed out that: the government is the main leader of digital strategy, guiding the private sector to participate in the construction of the digital strategy through the introduction of a series of policies as well as laws and regulations, and guiding international capital such as foreign direct investment to enter the domestic market; the private sector provides funds for national digital construction and actively makes use of their own advantages to further stimulate domestic digital demand; multinational capital, meanwhile, further satisfies the government’s financing needs and participates actively in standard-setting in the host country, using the advantages of technology, management and other intangible assets to participate in the domestic market for the digital economy; the entry of multinational companies into the domestic market will inevitably lead to fierce competition or cooperation with domestic enterprises, the impact of which may be beneficial, promoting the joint development of the private sector and multinational capital, but it may also bring about a negative impact, forming an oligopolistic market and thereby limiting the development of domestic enterprises. With the above analysis framework, the authors reached the conclusion that India's digital strategy is a clear digital strategy that can generate positive results, specifically, through establishing government-oriented public–private partnerships, the construction of digital infrastructure can be strengthened, the leading industries in the digital field can get strong support, and the spillover effect of the digital strategy can gain enough attention from parties concerned. However, just as every coin has two sides, the other side of the digital strategy shouldn’t be neglected. Digital strategy itself can only accelerate the development of a country, but it cannot fundamentally solve other internal problems existing in the economic and social development within the country, such as a limited role of the government rendered by national fiscal conditions, deep-rooted regional differentiation, improper policy-making orientation, as well as conservatism, which will make it difficult for the government, private capital and transnational capital to achieve a synergistic effect at a higher level, thus, restricting the realization of the national digital development strategy.

The paper entitled The Present and Future of Precision Agriculture in Thailand by Apathai Kintravit, Honorary Professor at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, and Kono Yasuyuki, Professor at Kyoto University in Japan, analyzes the application, effectiveness, and future prospects of precision agriculture as a paradigm, and technology to enhance the efficiency of agricultural resource management in Thailand. The authors found that precision agriculture has played a significant role in Thailand since 2015. It helps government authorities with the increasingly complex decision-making process and makes it easier for researchers to deal with progressively complicated information, while also encouraging more specialized activities among farmers. Precision agriculture has been widely promoted and developed as it lays the foundation for enhancing the sustainability of farm-level resource management. However, in actual practice in Thailand currently, precision agriculture only poses a limited impact on farm-level resource management, especially in terms of land and labor resources. Untimely project delivery, lack of access to technology, and uncoordinated, isolated, and short-sighted performance by agents and role-players in government agencies can all lead to failure. In late 2020 to early 2021, the authors, expert groups, and stakeholders held a series of agricultural forums on fruit crops. The authors formulated four feasible schemes for the future development of fruit crop precision agriculture in Thailand, cognizant of the changing trends and driving factors in society, technology, economy, environment, policy, and value and reached the conclusion that: policymakers with a long-term political vision must reshape the entire institutional system, so that they can better utilize the emerging digital technologies to meet needs and challenges. These feasible approaches lie in integrating conglomerates into a comprehensive system based on the overall policy and research framework of the BCG model (Bio-Cycle-Green Economy Model), so as to build up connections among small farms, multidisciplinary scientists and government agencies, and achieve long-term vision and goals.

The two papers in Chapter Four entitled Ethnic Issues in State Building explore how the legacy of tribalism and ethnicism hinder state-building and national identification.

The paper Kyrgyzstan Nation-State Building under the Dual Effects of Nationalism and Tribalism by Wang Tao, a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for International and Area Studies, mainly discussed the influence of tribalism and nationalism on the state-building process, taking the power alternation in 2005 as an example. The author found that tribalism still prevails in Kyrgyzstan due to historical and geographical factors. Tribes are still the main form of social organization, and there exist 40 different kinship-based tribal alliances, with fierce competition between tribes in northern and southern Kyrgyzstan. The mass protest that took place during the parliamentary election in 2005 was opposition from the southern tribes to the northern tribes as a long-standing monopolist power. Then President Askar Akayev’s (I added that he was president for context—please confirm) much-touted democracy was severely undermined by the protest, culminating in the overthrow of the Akayev administration by a coalition of politicians from southern Kyrgyzstan, which was considered as a failure of state-building. The author concluded from the analysis above that Kyrgyzstan’s leaders have never been able to weaken the influence of tribal politics, which subsequently leads to the failure of efforts made to integrate different ethnic groups into one, with a common national consciousness and national identity. In this context, a unified national identity is difficult to achieve. The endeavors made by Kyrgyzstan’s leaders to promote state nationalism finally turned out to be only useful for clan-tribal rule. The author believes that a vigorous promotion of state nationalism and the suppression of tribalism is conducive to promoting the development of ethnic and national identity so that they can further promote the building of Kyrgyzstan’s nation-state.

The paper Eelam War Trauma: The Loss of Trust in Northeast Sri Lanka, co-authored by Li Jia, a lecturer at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, and scholars from Japan and Sri Lanka, investigated the relationship between domestic war and social governance by analyzing the impact of the Salaam Civil War on Sri Lankan society and politics. The Eelam Civil War is one of the most enduring civil wars in the world (in global history?), which started in 1983 and ended in 2009, lasting for 25 years. The paper pointed out that the Civil War was a war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, representing the Tamil community, and the government army forces representing the Sinhalese community. The authors, on the basis of original household survey data from 1983 to 2009, assessed the wars impact on people's trust level in the State in war-torn areas by categorizing specific situations, including war exposure at individual and household levels, voluntary and mandatory military service experiences, and family members’ experiences of losing their lives as soldiers and civilians. The authors found that the Civil War destroyed the people's political trust in the government and exacerbated divisions between the Sinhalese and Tamils, as well as divisions within each of the two communities. To heal people’s trauma of the war, the author suggested that the Sri Lankan government should take action to rebuild political trust, which is particularly urgent for those physically injured in the war, Sinhalese who were forced to serve in the war, and Tamils who volunteered to join the LTTE. In addition, the government also needs to work on reconciliation within the Tamil community.

A feature series on Domestic Politics and Economic Development in Chapter Five includes three papers, discussing the relationship between domestic political factors and economic development, taking the Gulf States, Latin American countries, and South Africa as examples respectively.

Wang Tingyi, an assistant professor at the Institute for International and Area Studies, discussed the causes, ways, and impacts of the emergence of New Nationalism in the Gulf Arab states in his paper The Gulf Arab States in Transition. The author pointed out that these countries have witnessed a steady transfer of power from the old to the new generation over the past decade after analyzing the power game in Saudi Arabia, the concentration of state power in the United Arab Emirates, and the smooth succession of the throne in Oman and Kuwait. In addition, the new nationalism and new statism that emerged and spread around the world in the twenty-first century prevail in the Gulf Arab states. These oil-rich countries, whose “social contract” will be challenged in the coming years, are trying new approaches, including instilling the concept of a self-reliant economy, to reduce people’s expectations of government and other forms of national welfare, meanwhile avoiding undermining the legitimacy of the rulers’ administration. The economic crisis that started in 2008 has highlighted the political vulnerability of these countries, namely their “social contracts” are based on the exchange of political obedience from citizens for the social stability and economic gains provided by the government, while this kind of stability that the government can provide is increasingly limited. Therefore, a new nationalism rooted in patriotism and national identification has become the basis of the rulers’ campaign to rebuild its legitimacy. Its slogan has changed from “support us because we can provide you with a better life” to “support us not because we provide you with welfare, but because you are a citizen of this great country, because you love this country, and we are all its leaders”. This new nationalism that emerged in these traditional countries, with the characteristics of monarchy and traditional values, will have a significant social and political impact in the coming decades. The authors believed that the rapid social and economic changes including the population boom, the improvement of education levels and gender equality, and the expansion of new media, have strengthened political awareness, economic needs, and social participation of the people in the Gulf states. These changes have undermined traditional sources of legitimacy for political authority and political institutions, making it extraordinarily complex to build new socio-political foundations and new political institutions with both legitimacy and effectiveness.

The paper Left-Wing Governments and The Export Performance of Latin American Countries by Cheng Wenjun, a Ph.D. candidate from Fudan University, discussed the impact of the left-wing parties administration on the export trade in Latin American countries. It is generally believed that the left and right-wing parties will have policy inconsistency in countries with abundant land, rich capital but scarce labor. The Left supports protectionism, while the Right favors free trade, thus the right-wing party will perform better in export trade. However, through analyzing panel data of 15 Latin American countries between 1995 and 2019, the author found that under left-wing parties administration, the mechanism of the impact on foreign trade is contrary to what the traditional view predicts. Since the Pink Tide, left-wing governments in Latin America have adopted more measures in line with the position of free trade, instead of substituting industrialization for imports. They exported a large number of primary products abroad, and even more when the domestic manufacturing industry was underperforming, rather than establishing trade protection. In general, left-wing governments in Latin American countries have also adopted pro-export policies after the decline of neoliberalism. The author argued that, when all other variables are held constant, the administration of different parties does have a crucial impact on exports, but it depends on the situation of domestic manufacturing industry as well. Different from the concept during the import-substitution-industrialization period, left-wing governments have a preference for exporting, rather than establishing trade barriers to protect domestic manufacturing when the added value of domestic manufacturing accounts for a low proportion of GDP.

The paper SEZ Development in South Africa: A Case Study of Coega SEZ by Yang Chongsheng, an assistant professor at the Institute for International and Area Studies, analyzed the main advantages and problems of Coega SEZ, which is the earliest and largest industrial development zone in South Africa. After going through the existing research on Coega SEZ, the author found limited research on Coega SEZ, among which the focus varies. The author observed and analyzed the three main participants in the development and construction of Coega SEZ, namely the government, SEZ operator (Coega Development Corporation), and SEZ enterprises, so as to clarify the attribution of the problems and provide suggestions. The author believed that how the South African government at all levels understands and operates the SEZ would have a significant impact on the development of Coega, which is also the concern of investors. The multi-party system in South Africa has generated complicated partisan politics, in which different parties at all levels are formulated in the administrative system, subsequently leading to a cumbersome process of administrative procedures and policy implementation. Issues like overprotective labor laws for employees, aggressive labor unions, and frequent strikes will reduce enthusiasm from investors. In addition, deep-rooted poverty and educational plights in South Africa also reduce the competitiveness of the talent market to some extent. The author also suggested that for the South African government and relevant authorities that are responsible for designing SEZ strategies for better development, issues that should be of top concern include what the development paths of the SEZ are, what roles and functions they can play at each stage of the development, as well as how they and the management committees can form complementary mechanisms so as to better serve zone enterprises and facilitate multiple interactions among enterprises, between enterprises and management committees, and between enterprises and government departments, eventually improving the core competitiveness and comparative advantages of Coega SEZ.

Compared with foreign counterparts, Chinese participants who have submitted papers to this conference are mainly young scholars, and some of them are Ph.D. candidates and master's degree candidates, which indicates that international and regional studies are still a newly emerging discipline in China. Indeed, it was not until 2015 that the Ministry of Education of China began to lay out “International and Regional Studies Base”, and it was not until 2021 that “International and Regional Studies” became a first-level discipline under the interdisciplinary category issued by the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council (currently in the stage of opinion solicitation). It does not mean that China hadn’t conducted international and regional studies in the past. In fact, since the People's Republic of China resumed its legal status in the United Nations in 1970s, the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government have begun to launch studies on other countries, including establishing institutions and departments for various regions and country studies. An increasing number of scholars started their research in this field and produced some research works. However, by and large, the research at that time on international and regional studies was in the preliminary stage, marked with a very general understanding of other countries, and the typical research works were “Introduction to XX Country”. Since the reform and opening-up policy and China’s joining WTO, especially the entry into the twenty-first century, China’s political influence, economic strength, and international status have been improved remarkably, which calls for a more comprehensive, systematic, and profound understanding of the world than ever before, so as to decipher the “historical genes” and “cultural codes” of neighboring countries and the world, to promote commercial intercourse and cultural exchange between China and the world, and thus contribute Chinese wisdom to global governance in the era of momentous changes never seen in the last one hundred years, as well as facilitate the construction of a community with a shared future for humankind. This is how we live up to the responsibility as a major power, and how the international and regional studies respond to the call of our time.

In the author’s view, different from International and Regional Studies as a field, International and Regional Studies as a First-level Discipline has two important issues to consider from the operational level of building a new discipline.

The first issue is the change of disciplinary orientation. In China, traditional disciplines such as linguistics, history, economics, political science, sociology, ethnology, religion, and law are all classified in terms of fields, which can be called “field studies”. However, the research targets of International and Regional Studies are regions and countries, which are geographically or geopolitically defined, and for each specific region or country, its language, economy, politics, society, ethnicity, religion, and law are all part of International and Regional Studies. Therefore, International and Regional Study is inherently cross-disciplinary, which can be called “regional studies”. International and Regional Studies thus involve a shift from “field studies” to “regional studies”, i.e., the building of cross-disciplines. The mission of International and Regional Studies is to bridge the fields of knowledge that belong to separate disciplines, to systematically investigate the history and current situation of a certain region or country, to figure out how it develops and where it is going, to form an intersectional and unified system of knowledge, and to provide academic support for China to observe, understand and integrate into the world. All of this requires researchers to equip themselves with multidisciplinary knowledge, or an accumulation of knowledge that features a certain discipline and is supplemented by other disciplines. Only in this way can a comprehensive, multi-perspective, and macroscopic study on a certain region or country be conducted via multidisciplinary knowledge.

The second issue is a shift in the perspective of observation and research. In the past, International and Regional Studies in China was carried out in the following way, namely, researchers observed the object country (region) in China and studied it from China's standpoint, and this approach is obviously flawed for a comprehensive, in-depth and accurate understanding of the object country (region). As the saying goes, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”. Every country or region has its own particularities, and if we are to grasp such particularities comprehensively, deeply, and accurately, we must observe the object country (region) in the object country (region) and study the object country (region) from the standpoint of the object country (region). The academic mission of scholars engaged in International and Regional Studies is supposed to acquire the local knowledge of a certain country and region, to organically combine the observations of outsiders with those of insiders, and to organically combine the construction of extra-territorial knowledge from the perspective of the country, with the interpretation of knowledge of the country from an extra-territorial perspective. This requires Chinese scholars engaged in International and Regional Studies to localize their research and transform themselves into insiders from outsiders. This is the only way to gain a more comprehensive, in-depth, and accurate understanding of the targeted region or country, including its geographical location, climatic characteristics, customs and conventions, religious beliefs, historical traditions, social customs, cultural norms, political tendencies, legal systems, and social relations.

Undoubtedly, cultivating new talent is the first priority on the path to achieve the above-mentioned transformations. Generally speaking, the cultivation of talent is the core task of establishing a new discipline and the driving force for its sustainable development. This is particularly true for International and Regional Studies as a cross-discipline. Since the 1970s, when China started International and Regional Studies, especially since 2015 when the Ministry of Education promoted International and Regional Studies, hundreds of institutions have been set up by various Chinese government departments and universities to conduct International and Regional Studies, some of which are successful in research and distinctive in orientation. However, unfortunately, little has been done in cultivating new types of talent, and what they have done was generally based on existing disciplines. In this regard, the Doctoral Program for Developing Country Studies at Tsinghua University is worth recommending.

In 2011, on the occasion of Tsinghua University's Centenary, Tsinghua University President Gu Binglin and Executive Vice President Chen Jining launched the Doctoral Program for Developing Country Studies (which was merged into the recently established Institute for International and Area Studies in 2017), with the aim of cultivating a group of regional studies scholars with a Chinese background, a global horizon, and a local perspective. Since the inception of the program, Tsinghua University has been exploring and innovating the paradigm of education and cultivation of talent for International and Regional Studies with contemporary characteristics, enriching and improving the supporting resources for the teaching and further development of this program, and striving to achieve progress in multiple dimensions such as faculty provision, teaching upgrades, and standard management.

Over the last decade, the program has adhered to the following three concepts in the cultivation of new talent for International and Regional Studies in China. Firstly, the program is oriented to do fundamental research and cultivate academic talents, and it requires and guides graduate students to commit themselves to fundamental research, exploring some fundamental research issues within a targeted region or country as well as other discipline perspectives. Secondly, the program emphasizes in-depth field research, with a particular emphasis on fieldwork methods and practice as the core of the cultivation model. Thirdly, mastering interdisciplinary research methods, meaning the graduates are supposed to master the basic theories and research methods of a major discipline and be able to apply interdisciplinary methods in regional and country studies.

In order to achieve these concepts, four requirements are put forward for students. Firstly, students are required to be proficient both in English and one of the languages of the target country, and students are also encouraged to study other languages of the targeted country or region. Secondly, students are required to major in two main disciplines (international politics, economics, history, religion, ethnicity) according to the characteristics of the target country, and take as many optional courses as possible in other disciplines. Thirdly, students are required to attend academic lectures in different disciplines for different regions, including various issues like humanities, social sciences, science, and technology, in order to enrich their comprehensive knowledge. Fourthly, students are required to undertake fieldwork in the target country for no less than two years, which is fully funded by the program.

In terms of cultivating new talent for regional studies, the Doctoral Program for Developing Country Studies at Tsinghua University has indeed accumulated much experience after ten years of exploration. According to the author's observation, the following three practices are highly recommended.

• I. Mentorship mechanism. In view of the fact that the traditional “single-supervisor” talent cultivation model can’t meet the demand for cross-disciplinary integration as well as cross-regional and cross-national research subjects in International and Regional Studies, the program explores and practices, along with Ph.D. students, the “1 + 1 + 1” mentorship mechanism, i.e., domestic supervisor plus associate supervisor from the target country plus associate supervisor from developed countries. The domestic supervisor, or the main supervisor, is responsible for the whole process of student’s doctoral training, including the design of the doctoral curriculum, instruction on course studies, training of research abilities, assessment of academic standards, as well as dissertation writing. Meanwhile, the program requires students to choose an associate supervisor or co-advisor at one of the target country’s universities or research institutions during their visiting study period in developing countries, so that the candidate student can be better cultivated in academic training and thesis supervision. In addition, the program also encourages students to invite professors or experts in related fields to guide their individual Ph.D. research and dissertation writing during their visiting study in developed countries, based on their own research topics and academic development needs. The program, taking cross-disciplinary or regional Ph.D. cultivation as a breakthrough, invites foreign supervisors of Ph.D. students to China for seminars each year, and tries to innovate the organizational mechanism by integrating supervisors from different countries, universities, or institutions into Ph.D. students’ supervisory groups, creating an interdisciplinary or cross-regional supervisory model. The aim is to promote the integration of various academic ideas and perspectives and to inspire students to develop multi-dimensional scientific thinking and abilities.

• II. Curriculum design. The curriculum in the initial phase of the program was constrained by the fact that students were admitted to different disciplines, and most of the courses taken were theoretical and methodological ones within certain disciplines, lacking a systematic curriculum for regional country studies. In September 2017, the Institute for International and Regional Studies was officially set up as an independent second-level unit, providing a real platform for the further development of the developing country studies program. On this basis, a “2 + 3 + 6” curriculum system for cultivating academic talent with integrated abilities in International and Regional Studies was worked out, which consists of three types of courses: introductory courses in regional studies, specialized courses in regional studies, and a cluster of optional courses centering on regional studies. The two introductory courses are currently compulsory courses, including Area Studies: Origins, Development and Future, and Fieldwork in Developing Country Studies. Three specialized courses are compulsory, including Essentials of Anthropology, Comparative Political Development, and Economics of Development. Six courses centering on regional studies are optional, of which courses currently offered, include International History of the Cold War in Archives, for Eurasia, Religious Studies in India, for South Asia, and West Asian and North African History in Twentieth Century, for West Asia and North Africa. Three others are still in preparation and will be offered soon.

• III. Fieldwork. The purpose of “field life” is to turn researchers from “outsiders” into “insiders”, which is a basic requirement for scholars training in International and Regional Studies. Field life and investigation not only offer researchers the opportunity to collect first-hand material such as local archives and documents but also reach out to the local community and get acquainted with peers in academic circles, all of which will facilitate future research. The widespread use of fieldwork in regional studies has proved its practicability. Through several years of practice, the Doctoral Program for Developing Country Studies has developed a “2 + 1” fieldwork training mechanism, of which “2” refers to a minimum of two years of fundamental research and fieldwork practice in the target developing country, and “1” refers to one year of academic research or academic visits in renowned universities or institutions in developed countries, so that the Ph.D. students can approach the history and current situation of this discipline in developed countries, and build up a global perspective and theoretical knowledge framework of International and Regional Studies.

Since the first Ph.D. students enrolled in 2012, the Doctoral Program for Developing Country Studies has cultivated and trained 68 young scholars. Twenty-five Ph.D. students had completed their studies and obtained their doctorates by May 2022, with an average study period of 6–7 years. This group of young scholars are vigorous, diligent, and add new dynamics to regional studies. By 2021, 196 Chinese journal papers had been published by the Ph.D. students in the program, of which 85 papers are included in core journals. Published papers in foreign languages include 25 in English, 4 in Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. The Ph.D. students have actively participated in important academic conferences at home and abroad during their studies, and by May 2022, 52 conference papers had been published, which indicates the distinctive achievement of this program in teaching and researching, as well as its international academic influences. In addition, they have actively participated in dozens of national research projects. The Ph.D. students, collaborating with researchers from the Regional Research Institute, have participated in 25 research projects in total, including 11 national-level projects and 6 provincial and ministerial-level projects.

The author hopes that the various Institutes of International and Regional Studies in China will, on the basis of their existing research, communicate and discuss the issue of cultivating new talent, and draw up a set of effective mechanisms and models for cultivating young scholars in International and Regional Studies on the basis of the Tsinghua model. Young scholars are the hope of China's academic future, also the hope of International and Regional Studies as a new discipline in China, because they are the “sun at eight or nine o'clock in the morning” (quote from Mao Zedong), and because hope does rest on them.

This is the purpose for which this collection has been edited and published.