(Yicai) Oct. 14 -- China Studies is undergoing a profound global transformation, according to an expert in the field, with a gradual decline in Western influence and a rise in the role of social media and artificial intelligence.

Once dominated by Western institutions and scholars, China Studies is now growing faster in the Global South, said Martin Jacques, a senior visiting fellow at IDEAS, the Asia research centre of the London School of Economics, and a visiting professor at the China Institute of Fudan University.

With most of the world’s population residing in the Global South and countries such as Chile, Brazil, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia deepening ties with China via the Belt and Road Initiative, there has been a "decentering of Western influence" in China Studies, Jacques said at the three-day World Conference on China Studies, which is being held in Shanghai through tomorrow.

Foreign students from the Global South now outnumber those from the United States or Europe at Chinese universities, he noted.

Technological shifts, such as the rise of social media and AI, are also having a transformative effect on the field. Jacques noted the emergence of a "global village of knowledge" in the AI era, with instant access to vast amounts of information -- previously available only to specialists -- changing university and research center operations.

A core challenge remains Western scholars’ tendency to judge China by Western standards, Jacques argued. This paradigm, rooted in over two centuries of Western supremacy, leads to misjudgments. Since China is not and will never be Western, it "always fails the Western test," fostering negativity. 

Yet China’s continued rise, outpacing the West in multiple fields and redefining modernity, exposes the flaw in this mindset and also limits Western cultural and intellectual growth, Jacques said.

He stressed that despite growing global interest, China’s history, culture, governance, and foreign policy remain poorly understood, which is partly a legacy of its past isolation. As the world seeks to engage with and learn from China, addressing this gap is the "great challenge" for China Studies in the decades ahead, he noted.

The Second World Conference on China Studies is being hosted by the State Council Information Office and the Shanghai government. The event has attracted around 500 prominent experts and scholars from home and abroad.

Editor: Tom Litting