APPENDIX 24
Memorandum submitted by British Association
for Chinese Studies
As President of the British Association for
Chinese Studies, I thank you for the invitation to submit a memorandum.
I have now canvassed all heads of departments and centres of Chinese
studies in the UK. The formulation of views below is my own, but
it reflects as honestly and accurately as possible the views which
have been sent to me.
1. CHINA IS
LARGE, VARIED
AND CLOSE
We are not alone in the frequency of our contacts
with China. Tourists and business people as well as academics
and researchers have for the past 20 years been finding it increasingly
easy to visit the PRC. We are frequently visited by Chinese from
the PRC, and it is easy to read or see news from China in the
British and international press. This can be expected to continue.
The quality of information and expertise on China in China is
increasing even faster, as each of us can vouchsafe from our own
colleagues in the PRC. Yet "China" is still treated
as if any expert can pronounce on it and as if it were knowable
from the centre and were similar throughout. An expert on China
is often expected by the media to be able to comment on all things
Chinese. The quality of information and advice given to government
and media is frequently crude and out of date. People with no
knowledge of religion in China are expected to comment on the
Fa Lun Gong. People with no knowledge of Tibet are similarly expected
to comment on a speech about the Dalai Lama.
China is still being treated as a distant country
which can be understood as a whole, whereas it is a sub-continent
of extremely varied economic conditions, with many languages and
local cultures. Even though it is under a single government, local
governments now have great autonomy and the implementation of
policy is extremely varied in its local interpretation for local
purposes. What policy means cannot be told from contacts with
and study of central government. Cultural exchanges are not just
with artists in Shanghai and Beijing, but with puppet masters
in Quanzhou and musicians from the Hebei countryside.
It is of course possible and useful to compile
China-wide statistics and analyse them. It is of course vital
to study developments in the capital. But the quality and range
of knowledge available and required of local conditions is substantial
and growing, and therefore the range of local knowledge and of
expertise needed is far greater. To do business in the south-western
province of Yunnan, for instance, you need someone with close
knowledge of Yunnan and not just someone familiar with the relevant
ministries and laws at the centre. Some large European business
consultation seminars recruit a range of experts (economists,
business experts, experts on political history, experts on everyday
culture). The FCO's China research section holds seminars with
a similar range of academic experts. The best advised will need
to follow suit. But even they will increasingly require even more
expertise and in addition will need knowledge of localities within
China. A steeply increasing number of local studies shows that
assertions of Chinese singular and continuous civilisation are
confronted by counter-assertions of partial and new cultural identities
at all levels, each of them contesting the categories standardised
by states and international conventions. For this and other reasons,
political reforms in the PRC, starting with elections of the lowest
levels of government, are likely to have unforeseen effects.
2. NEED FOR
A SUSTAINED
INCREASE IN
EXPERTISE
All this presents problems of appraisal—for
instance by anyone dealing with human rights issues. If the UK
is to keep up with best practice, in its media, business, cultural
and government affairs with China, an ever greater range of China
experts will be necessary. As one of our members has written in
response to my consultation "trying to keep an eye on dynamic,
diverse and deep-rooted civilisations with a handful of "experts"
is actually a self-defeating approach that cannot even meet its
minimal aims. China only ceases to be a problem when it is seen
as somewhere no more distant and exotic than France or Germany—as
it is in an era of globalisation—and comparable resources
are devoted to its study throughout the education system as a
whole, not the irregular dollops of funding handed out just to
keep a "minority" interest alive".
The most recent "dollop" has been
the extra funding of postgraduate courses on contemporary China
in selected centres of the UK. This was the result of an HEFCE
initiative, after an extensive inquiry, and it is of course most
welcome. But what will happen after the five years of that funding
is over? A sustained increase is needed. Even now it is difficult
to recruit British students to the new courses, because they can
afford the fees less easily than overseas students and the HEFCE
funding cannot be used for scholarships. Postgraduate scholarships
for these courses and for research degrees on China are needed
for British students.
Just as vital is the need for an assessment
and broadening of the infrastructure of Chinese language training
at sixth-form and Further Education levels, and teaching about
China in schools.
One relatively inexpensive way of increasing
expertise on China in the UK is the facilitation of research students
in the humanities and social sciences from the PRC to pursue their
studies in the UK. At the moment, we cannot compete with US universities
who can offer scholarships or teaching assistantships to help
Chinese scholars fund their studies and pay the fees. The British
Academy's Sino-British Fellowships and the KCWong Fellowships
awarded by the Royal Society and the British Academy number the
equivalent of eight or nine one-year visits and are post-doctoral.
A national scholarship scheme for five PRC PhD students a year
would not just increase the range of experts available here substantially
and quickly but would also establish long-term links between the
doctoral student and academic experts in the UK.
The standard suspicion and obstruction with
which applicants for visas to study in the UK are met in the British
consulates in the PRC is a comparatively minor but definite discouragement
which could be eliminated at once.
3. UNDERUSE OF
ACADEMIC EXPERTISE
IN DEVELOPMENT
PROJECTS
Development projects in China funded by government
and EU agencies often pay huge sums to business consultancies
which have a very general and imprecise knowledge of China. Using
the available academic expertise would cost less and release funds
for long and short courses involving both academics and business
people with good knowledge and experience of working in China
for government personnel dealing with China.
4. THE FCO'S
POLICY OF
CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE
ON HUMAN
RIGHTS
This has met a mixed response among those I
have consulted. On the one hand, it seems to have enabled research
in China to continue despite the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy
in Belgrade and to have enabled Chinese colleagues to air their
own views on human rights more openly. But on the other hand,
it has done little or nothing to release prisoners of conscience
or halt further arrests and prolonged detentions of dissidents,
demonstrators and migrants without papers.
Professor Stephan Feuchtwang
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