How should we understand China?
This question seems more pressing today than ever before. At a time when the norms and institutions that have long underpinned the international order are undergoing profound change, China has become an increasingly consequential presence in the world. What mechanisms and logic shape the workings of the Chinese state? What is happening within Chinese society, and what are people thinking? And how does China seek to engage with the world?
Understanding the Chinese state and society historically and structurally, and examining the logic behind China’s behavior on the international stage, has become essential—not only for thinking about relations between Japan and China, but also for considering the future of international peace and the lives of people around the world.
At the same time, making sense of China—and talking about it with nuance—seems to have become more difficult than ever. Today, we encounter an enormous volume of information about China every day, through social media and online videos as well as newspapers and books. Yet more information does not necessarily lead to a better understanding of China. Some accounts are shaped by political agendas and particular points of view; others lack sufficient grounding in specialist knowledge or evidence. While striking and easily digestible narratives can spread rapidly, the insights of practitioners who have engaged with China over many years, and of scholars who have studied the country historically and structurally, can easily become lost in this sea of information.
We have studied China in the university setting and engaged with the country in many different ways. In doing so, we have increasingly found ourselves wondering whether a gap has emerged between the rich body of knowledge about China accumulated through research and practice—what we might call “China knowledge”—and the information about China that circulates daily in society.
Could the knowledge and insights of scholars, specialists, and practitioners who gather at universities, or engage with them in various ways, be shared more widely with society? Could we create a space where, rather than simply reporting what has happened in any given event, we explore the history and structures behind it and think together about why things have come to be as they are?
It was with these questions in mind that the Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the Institute of East Asian Studies, Keio University, launched a research project in fiscal year 2026 commissioned by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s Japan–China Friendship Fund. This website, China Studies Hub, serves as the project’s platform for sharing its work with a wider public.
China Studies Hub is organized around three broad themes.
The first is “Understanding China’s Politics, Economy, and Society Historically and Structurally.” Rather than simply following events as they unfold, we ask how they have emerged from particular historical trajectories and how they are connected to institutions and broader social structures.
The second is “China and Japan in a Changing International Order.” What role does China seek to play as the international order undergoes profound change? Within this changing landscape, how should Japan engage with China, and what kind of international community can Japan help to envision?
The third is “Japan, China, and the World through Information and Culture.” The ways in which we see China—and the ways in which people in China see Japan and the world—are shaped not only by politics and economics, but also by information and culture, including the media, film, literature, and social media. We therefore also turn our attention to the perceptions, emotions, and images that emerge through these forms of communication and cultural expression.
Through these three themes, we hope to bring to a broad audience some of the most stimulating and innovative thinking about China emerging in Japan and around the world.
What we hope to offer through this website is more than knowledge or the latest information. How do scholars and practitioners who have spent many years working in their respective fields see China? What questions guide their work? What sources, experiences, and methods shape the way they think? We hope to share not only what they know, but also their ways of seeing and ways of asking questions. This aspiration lies at the heart of the name China Studies Hub.
China cannot be understood from any single perspective. Precisely for that reason, encountering the insights of people with different areas of expertise and different experiences can reveal aspects of China that we may not have seen before. We would be delighted if each piece of content on this website could offer a new vantage point from which to understand China on its own terms, historically and structurally—or introduce readers, listeners, and viewers to questions they had never thought to ask.
As a forum for intellectual exchange, this website aims to be accessible to a wide range of audiences through text, audio (podcasts), and video (YouTube), and in three languages: Japanese, English, and Chinese.
We sincerely hope that, beginning with this modest endeavor, the circle of dialogue around “China knowledge” will gradually expand—from Japan and China to the wider world.
September 2026
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