“I agree with lots of the ideas you put forward in the proposal. From my perspective as a communication scholar working in a public university who has been studying and later working in the US since 2007, I see a drastic change since the latter years of 2010s in terms of interest in and funding for China studies in academia...though we hear more about China in the news. I am quite concerned by the representation of China in mainstream media.
I agree with you that many academics are perhaps not policy-oriented with their research, but I believe academic research has its own merits. They often more historicized, contextualized, and take a long-term view. I think the key here is to establish more channels to translate academic research to serve policy goals. Yours and several other media outlets like Sinica Podcast does a good job giving academic research some more public exposure and get academics to become more policy-minded.
Also, from my own perspective as a China-born international scholar who has been studying Chinese international studies and more recently US-based ethnic Chinese scholars in STEM, I think there’s also a concern about how inclusive the US will be to ethnic Chinese scholars given the deteriorating US-CHina relations. Personally, I think these scholars play an important role of bridging the two societies. They could offer more policy support if given a better platform in the US.
Another big issue here is how to fill the vacuum left open by the Confucius society. For public universities like ours, Chinese language teaching used to be heavily reliant on funding from CI, now they are gone from most American campuses, who will fund Chinese language studies?
CI also used to organize a lot of cultural events and to bring in speakers for academic talks, now we no longer have that budget.”
Adding some commentary from folks who aren’t on EA Forum but gave me their permission to post:
Dr. Lin Zhang (https://cola.unh.edu/person/lin-zhang)
“I agree with lots of the ideas you put forward in the proposal. From my perspective as a communication scholar working in a public university who has been studying and later working in the US since 2007, I see a drastic change since the latter years of 2010s in terms of interest in and funding for China studies in academia...though we hear more about China in the news. I am quite concerned by the representation of China in mainstream media.
I agree with you that many academics are perhaps not policy-oriented with their research, but I believe academic research has its own merits. They often more historicized, contextualized, and take a long-term view. I think the key here is to establish more channels to translate academic research to serve policy goals. Yours and several other media outlets like Sinica Podcast does a good job giving academic research some more public exposure and get academics to become more policy-minded.
Also, from my own perspective as a China-born international scholar who has been studying Chinese international studies and more recently US-based ethnic Chinese scholars in STEM, I think there’s also a concern about how inclusive the US will be to ethnic Chinese scholars given the deteriorating US-CHina relations. Personally, I think these scholars play an important role of bridging the two societies. They could offer more policy support if given a better platform in the US.
Another big issue here is how to fill the vacuum left open by the Confucius society. For public universities like ours, Chinese language teaching used to be heavily reliant on funding from CI, now they are gone from most American campuses, who will fund Chinese language studies?
CI also used to organize a lot of cultural events and to bring in speakers for academic talks, now we no longer have that budget.”