China needs ‘original’ knowledge system on border history to counter West, scholar says

China should establish an “original” knowledge system regarding the history of its border regions to mitigate security risks from “hostile forces in the West”, according to a senior scholar at a prominent state-run think tank.

Fan Enshi of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) also warned about the threat of “de-Sinicisation” in US-led historical perspectives, calling for a shift from “fragmented research” towards systematic domestic theories that could better project Chinese influence internationally.

“The world today is undergoing great changes unseen in a century, with hostile forces in the West in particular attempting to use borderland issues to contain China,” Fan, a deputy director of CASS’ Institute of Chinese Borderland Studies, cautioned in an article published last week by Qiushi, the Communist Party’s leading theoretical journal.

The efforts were “bringing more uncertain and unpredictable risks and challenges to the security, stability and development of our country’s border regions”, he said in the article published last week.

Beijing is pushing to speed up “the construction of China’s indigenous borderland knowledge system” following a call to action by President Xi Jinping. Photo: Kyodo

Fan went on to note that those circumstances necessitated a robust approach to developing the country’s indigenous academic system of Chinese borderland studies. However, “some fundamental concepts … remain unclear”, he said.

South China Morning Post