Politics Against Science: Reflections on the Study of Chinese Politics in Contemporary China

As a preliminary investigation and an intellectual reflection of the state of the field of Chinese domestic political study conducted in the Chinese language in mainland China, this paper deals with a threefold task. It first assesses the state of the field of the study of Chinese politics in mainland China, and argues that this scholarship is underdeveloped in comparison with the study of home-country politics in some other countries. It then clarifies the often blurring boundaries in contemporary China between the political science study of Chinese politics on one hand and other categories of political writings on the other, and maintains that the political penetration from the Party-state has been the major factor that hinders the intellectual development of the study of Chinese politics as a branch of political science. The paper, thirdly, suggests the so-called “open-minded independence of scholarship” with the emphases on academic autonomy and institutionalized professionalism as what the most needed for developing the study of Chinese politics in the Sinophonic world.