The Role of Social Science in China Scholarship

Abstract

In 1959, the tenth anniversary of the Communist take-over in China, Howard Boorman reviewed Western scholarship on Chinese politics in an essay subtitled “Some Remarks on Retarded Development.”1 Although a good deal has taken place in Western rese0arch since that time—and the Chinese Communists have, through their actions, generated considerably more subject matter—I am inclined to give my essay the same subtitle. Many books and articles on China have been published since 1959, but social science analysis has neither “staged a take-off” nor begun “the drive to maturity,” to borrow two of W. W. Rostow's terms. In fact, in my opinion social science has yet to achieve “the preconditions for take-off” from which it can begin to theorize about China.