Today’s world is experiencing “great changes unprecedented in a century,” and a series of theories, doctrines and beliefs about order and law that accompanied the unipolar international landscape in the post-Cold War period are being impacted and tested by the new historical process, and the tension between them and the practice of “Chinese-style modernization” is becoming increasingly prominent. In order to promote the understanding of the ongoing global order change, deepen the new understanding of the relationship between China and the world, and promote the development of the theory of law, foreign-related rule of law and area studies, the Fourth Summer School on “New Perspectives on Empire, International Law and Area Studies”, took place over July 3–7. On the afternoon of July 7, at the closing roundtable seminar, the participating scholars further explored the interrelationship between empire and international law/systems in global history and reflected on how exploring this interrelationship could contribute to area studies under development in China.
Knowledge production in area studies is subjective, and exploring China’s own subjectivity is imperative. Prof. Yin Zhiguang from Fudan University pointed out that the 19th-century British theorists’ perception of the global order bears a deep imprint of British hegemony and imperialism. Today, Chinese scholars need to think deeply about their own position and mission when constructing an autonomous system of knowledge about the global world, especially reflecting on the intellectual traditions left behind by colonialism in history. Li Chengyu, an associate professor at the Inner Mongolia University of Science & Technology, pointed out that European colonialism held that imperial rule must be achieved through the export of culture and religion in order to indoctrinate and transform the so-called ignorant and backward indigenous societies. After encountering setbacks, this “highly moralized and justified” theory shifted to a focus on the natural needs and emotional relationships of the indigenous, but it still could not get rid of the context of a civilizational hierarchy. The understanding of modernity or modern issues since the late Qing Dynasty is often embedded in this theoretical genealogy, and needs to be analyzed in depth, and this summer school provides important theoretical perspectives and methodologies to do so.
The process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation faces the challenges of many internal and external factors, and its rejuvenation cannot rely on luck, but must have a clear subjectivity in the production of knowledge. Wang Xianhua, professor from the Institute for the Global History of Civilizations, Shanghai International Studies University, pointed out that history studies are the foundation of all kinds of social science knowledge, but even the writing of global history, which seems to aim at transcending the nation-state, also suffers from the problem of subjectivity. Citing the late scholar Liu Haibo’s motto of “self-contained system, self-constructed glory,” he called for the promotion of historical research with China’s own subjectivity. According to Zhang Yongle, associate professor of Peking University’s Law School, “self-contained system, self-constructed glory” is a very important task facing China today, and the construction of an independent knowledge system of philosophy and social sciences requires a lot of new exploration. Especially for Chinese students who study abroad, after studying from the West, they need to discover and trace the historical specificity of many concepts and propositions in the Western knowledge system with the consciousness of Chinese subjectivity, and place them in a proper position from the level of universality.
China faces a number of challenges in international communication, and a research perspective on empire and international law can provide important insights into understanding such challenges. According to Wang Weijia, an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Peking University, the concept of empire provides a holistic perspective on the issue of international communication, and, at the same time, communication can provide a very important angle for understanding empire at the operational level. How to construct the network of communication, who should control the network of communication, and what legal means should be used to control the network of communication are all theoretically enlightening topics that deserve further exploration.
The discussion of empire and international law is expanding the boundaries of legal studies. According to Wu Yilong, an associate professor at Henan University, in the legal research map formed by “juristiche dogmatic,” “law and social science,” and “political law jurisprudence,” “political law jurisprudence” has a particularly ambitious vision of studies on empire and international law, greatly advancing theoretical critique and reflection. Law and social science can also contribute to the measurement of value, which is of particular concern to political law jurisprudence, by translating it into factual and empirical issues.
As a new first-level discipline, “area studies” is gradually forming a new academic community. Lei Shaohua, an associate professor at the School of International Studies, Peking University, said that, since the mid-1990s, every generation of international political science students has been bound by the framework of Western theories. Now that the discipline of area studies is booming, there is an urgent need for Chinese subjectivity to break the bonds of a series of Western theoretical paradigms and produce new intellectual content. In the present context, China’s efforts to upgrade in the global industrial chain are being suppressed by hegemonic countries; to safeguard China’s own right to development, it is necessary to unite the global South in a joint effort. Fu Zheng, an assistant research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, opined that it is difficult to rely on the Western academy itself to break down Western-centrism. Many Western scholars of global history have never been able to break away from the Western experience. But to advance China’s own third-world country studies, there is still a need to overcome the many obstacles in the developed-country-centered research ecology that has been formed. Chen Xiaohang, a post-doctoral fellow at Peking University’s Law School, echoed Fu Zheng’s point of view. Taking critical international law as an example, he argued that although it is quite critical of the Western tradition of international law in the modern era, it is likely to be conservative in the face of the contemporary system of rules of international law, ignoring the traditions and claims of international laws of other regions and countries.
China studies nowadays need to explore a new universality, but the universality should not be a mirror image opposite to the old universality. Song Nianshen, a professor at the Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, said that China history studies should have a global historical perspective, but at the same time, it should also be noted that global history studies has its own subjectivity, and that some global history studies that seem to get rid of the nation-state actually secretly serve the purpose of nation-state construction. But for many extra-territorial studies, one should not fall into an either-or state, but should better shape our own potentials when reconstructing our intellectual relationship with the world.
In his concluding remarks, Prof. Jiang Shigong, pointed out that one should maintain a passion for learning about everything meaningful in the world that has been thought about. First, academic research needs to raise good questions; second, researchers should read the classics; third, we should pay attention to our own tradition. According to him, while emphasizing subjectivity, Chinese particularism and exceptionalism should not be the direction of the future, and Chinese thought and academics should contribute to mankind at the level of universality.
The “New Perspectives on Empire, International Law and Area Studies” summer school was the fourth session of its kind at Peking University, and was supported by the “Innovative Program for Graduate Education” of Peking University. More than 60 participants from all over China attended the summer school and listened to the presentations of the scholars.
