What Is China?

“What is China?” is an important question, as China has risen to become a global power and the world’s second-largest economy. Harvard University sponsored an international symposium on “What Is China: New Perspectives in New Eras” from April 18–19, 2025. The keynote speaker, Professor Ge Zhaoguang (葛兆光) from Fudan University in Shanghai, has written several books on the topic.

Ge Zhaoguang (right)

The conference brought together scholars from China, Macao, Britain, and Singapore, many of whom were younger. The conference wanted to honor Professor Ge’s work. It focused on literature, history, and philosophy, while many lectures at the University discussed Sino-American tensions, the trade tariffs, and China’s foreign policies in the spring term.

This was the first time I had attended a conference at the Yenching Auditorium at the Harvard-Yenching Institute after many years. The Auditorium, which seats about 200 people, was filled when the conference began. The audience was mainly Chinese scholars and students, with only about 10 Western scholars and students. The conference was conducted bilingually, with papers delivered in Chinese or English. This scene was markedly different from when I was a doctoral student in the mid-1980s. At that time, the audience was mainly Westerners because China had only opened to the outside since the late 1970s, and few Chinese students were studying abroad. The conference would be conducted in English only.

Professor Ge explained why “China” has become an issue nowadays. The borders of China have shifted in different dynasties, and China has entered into territorial disputes with its neighbors, most recently over the control of the South China Sea.

With the rise of China, China has to reflect on its identity and history and respond to how it is perceived from the outside. For example, Chinese and Western scholars debated whether Tibet belongs to China. China is a country with many ethnicities, and the treatment of Tibetans and Uyghurs has caused international concerns.

Professor Ge pointed out that China had developed a central political and cultural area since the Chin and Han dynasties, and the Han tradition emerged. Yet, he insisted that China is a product of constant intermingling in its history. Though Han is the largest ethnic group, other ethnic groups contribute to China’s culture and history. For example, he named several famous poets, including Bai Juyi (白居易) and Liu Yuxi (劉禹錫), who had Turkish and Huns heritages.

Professor Ge spent some time discussing “China” as a nation-state and an empire. The modern state of China was formed following the overthrow of the Manchus and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1911. But the Chinese have long harbored the thought of being an empire or a larger common community (大一統, 天下, 中華民族共同體). China’s road to becoming a nation-state has similarities and differences with other nations. Modern China, Professor Ge said, can be seen as a unique combination of an external form of nation-state with a traditional concept of “universal empire.” This combination is one of the reasons behind contemporary China’s complexity of identity, politics, and outlook.

Benedict Anderson famously said that a “nation” is an “imagined community.” People have imagined China differently in shifting historical circumstances. The notions of tianxia (all under heaven) or a universal empire were developed at particular times and are re-articulated in the contemporary period to serve certain political or ideological purposes. Several presenters offered interesting perspectives on the relationship between the center and the periphery in Chinese history. In addition to studying how the Han culture influenced other ethnic groups, we should also examine how the so-called “barbarian” cultures influenced China (夷化, 胡化 ).

Professor David Wang of Harvard University presented a paper on “Borderland as Literature.” He offers two meanings of “border.” On the one hand, border can mean the margin or boundary ( 邊界，邊境 ). In this sense, the border is seen as secondary or peripheral to the center. On the other hand, the border can mean the space or place that brings two entities together (邊際). He used China’s dongbei (northeast) as an example of such a borderland. The northeastern part of China was ruled as Manchuria (1934–1945), and Chinese, Japanese, and Russian literary figures had written about this borderland space.

Several other papers captured my attention. One was on maritime power and governance in the Qing Empire. Ronald C. Po showed us various maritime maps depicting the islands surrounding the coasts of China in the Qing dynasty. The maps showed the locations and directions of the islands, and the seas were divided into inner and outer regions. How China defined its coastal borders historically might illuminate border disputes in the South China Sea in our time.

I was impressed by the linguistic skills of some of the presenters, which enabled them to study topics seldom broached before. Kung Ling-wei presented a paper on “Connections between Kalmykia, Russia, and China in the Making of Qing Knowledge of Eurasia.” A nomadic Mongolian group traveled between China and Inner Asia. They brought back knowledge of the Ottoman Empire and other Western empires. They had a more cosmopolitan view and saw China as one empire among many, which contradicted the Qing literati’s view that China was the only empire at the center of the world.

Michael Hill spoke on translating the Islamic Book of Odes from Arabic to Chinese in the 1870s. Yusuf Ma Dexin (馬德新 1794–1874) was a Muslim scholar from Dali in Yunnan. He went to study in Cairo and other places, and when he returned, he translated and introduced Arabic literature to the Chinese. I have not heard about the connections between Chinese and Arabic culture before.

The conference also discussed how China should be studied. In the academy, there is Chinese studies. But the perennial question has been, “What is ‘Chinese’ in Chinese studies?” Shu-mei Shih and others have suggested Sinophone studies, instead of Chinese studies. Sinophone studies focuses on the Sinitic-language cultures instead of limiting it to a nation or geographical area. Scholars in China largely reject the name of Sinophone studies, while Taiwanese scholars have mixed feelings about the term. Kyle Shernuk proposes “Sinoscapes” as a way to reimagine Chinese studies. He said a Sinoscape “can be understood as a contingent and synergistic theoretical model useful for analyzing processes of individual or artistic self-realization and worldmaking as they bear on Sinitic expression.” He cites as an example the comparative studies of disenchantment in novels of a mainland Chinese author and a tribal writer in Taiwan.

The conference stimulated new ideas about “What is China?” In the opening remarks, one of the organizers said that it was only in a university that a conference like this could take place. At a time when the Trump administration wanted to limit academic freedom and curtail the power of universities, it is all the more important to treasure and protect scholarly exchanges with other nations and the freedom to exchange ideas.