Social sciences research in China, not as well funded in the past as the hard sciences, is undergoing an even further narrowing so that research more closely serves the purposes of the state, experts have said, with some going as far as to say social sciences in China have undergone political rectification under Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
As part of China’s control over the intelligentsia, there has been greater focus on moulding the social sciences, including law, economics, political science, sociology and ethnic studies, to be politically correct, according to Carl Minzner, professor of law at Fordham University, New York, and an expert on Chinese law and politics.
“In the past four or five years they [the Chinese leadership] have been in an effort to politically sanitise the social sciences in China,” Minzner told University World News. “They were worried that they had lost control over the narrative, and that there were too many critical voices emerging within university classrooms in China.”
