Methods for area studies and contemporary China study

What is it about?

This article emphasizes that the discipline of area study is yet an important tool to understand problems occurring in each region on politics, economics, societies, and the behavior of political leaders in the real world, though it has come to be often neglected. The reason that area study itself has not developed a distinct analytical framework is a comprehensive synthetic research process, and there are many analytical approaches that inclines toward specific discipline of different researchers. Researchers with theoretical background often criticize that area studies are not social science. As long as we assert that area study is also a kind of theoretical research, it is necessary to construct a common methodological framework for area study researchers. The article proposes the idea of basic core structure combining with some extracted characteristics on topography, culture, history, and social structure, which are difficult to change easily in specific regions. By using it as an important analytical framework, and combining with disciplines such as political science and economics, we analyze and interpret specific phenomenon that has been revealed in certain region. The basic core structure of China, for example, can be understood as the combination with “the four massive aspects” (population, region, ideology, and power) and “the four divisions” (elite and people, human network and system, city and country, and politics and economics). Various phenomena in China (such as the relationship between economic development and democratization) can only be effectively understood by taking into account of the four massive aspects and divisions in the basic core structure of China.

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