The “Chinese Century” and the dynamics of knowledge in a longue durée

Abstract

Contemporary discourses of “Asian Century” or “Chinese Century” lead to the belief that economic growth and participation of world politics of Asian nations are changing today’s world. However, we also wonder to what extent it will restructure our world, if today’s world and our common future are still conceptualized and imagined according to the foundation of knowledge that was and is still offered by the history of Western civilization and if we still remain as consumers of universal modernity within the language frame of development and modernization. This article offers some reflections on the decoloniality of knowledge in the Chinese context. To better understand the historic process as well as to open discussions to make possible changes from a broader perspective, we will look at two moments in Chinese academia: one is related to educational movements in the beginning of the last century and the second is in regard to some new trends in the current Chinese anthropological scene.

Events Management in the "Chinese Century"

“…MINGGUANG LIU* AND JAMES S. KENNELL † LIU AND KENNELL have introduced terms such as the "Chinese Century" (Beckley, 2012;Brands, 2018;Hartley, 2008;Hongling, 2015;Pan, 2013;Stiglitz, 2014), the "Pacific Century" (Borthwick, 2018;Scott, 2007), and the "Asian Century" (Antonopoulos, 2017;Morrison, 2014). Taken together, these terms describe the move towards a world economy centered increasingly on the Asia-Pacific region, where emerging and resurgent economies are coming to play a more assertive role in the development of international trade, public diplomacy, and security.…”