That's the East-West gatekeeping differential
At St Andrews I discussed my master's thesis with a very good professor:
- Are you planning to make a PhD out of it?
- Let's be honest, would I ever be able to make here a career as a researcher of *British* history?
- No
Another very smart and altruistic professor encouraged me to concentrate on China instead. Indeed, we both knew that if I potentially focused on China, I would probably do well, even in the UK and even coming from Eastern Europe. There's *way* less gatekeeping in this area
I don't really know how it is in Japan/Korea studies but in my experience China Studies have very, very little gatekeeping. You literally can be a noname from the backwoods and do great. And by doing great I don't mean glorifying the Party, I mean actual academic research
Why? Two reasons. First, countries like China (and may be India) suffer from the lack of attention. Yeah, China is kinda discussed often. But the Chinese internal discourse, public imagination, etc. are virtually unknown outside of the narrow pool of niche experts. Nobody cares
Second, in China there's lots to study. Consider the New Qing Historiography, they literally revolutionised our understanding of the Qing period and probably of the entire Chinese history. How? They started reading the Manchu archives which had been kinda ignored previously
In China (and may be in India) it can be very easy to revolutionise the entire filed just by introducing tons of new documents. Because there's hella lots of primary sources that are not used, not read, not referred to. There's a lot of informative sources to dig in
I know many would disagree, but I feel that in Britain it may be more difficult to introduce something *completely* new into the debate. Yes, you can always find something interesting and obscure. But I can't imagine an archival revolution of the Chinese scale happening there
I would argue that while China suffers from the lack of attention, Britain may have the opposite problem. This asymmetry has a heavy impact on the academic market and may be a major cause of the East-West Gatekeeping Differential. The end
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