| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 政治學研究所 === 101 === The rise of China is self-evident. Its rise as a state seems inexorable on many fronts. As such, most studies of China’s rise, approached from the perspective of international relations, focuses on China’s rise as a state. However, this neglects the question of what China’s rise means for Sinic civilization. The studies that attempt to address this question are studies on Sinicization.
Sinicization is a complex area of study, in many ways harder to pursue than the study of China as a state. The study of Sinicization endeavours to shed light on four principle questions: what is the relationship between civilization and the state; what are the practices and processes that constitute civilization; which of these processes and how do they work to reconstitute the borders of civilization; and how is modernity defined, or in the context of Sinicization, what it means to be a modern Chinese.
Civilizational studies, of which Sinicization is a part, are not new. However, the study of Sinicization has gained renewed prominence along with the dramatic rise of China following its economic reforms. Civilizations constantly interact and adapt to each other in processes of acculturation. What is distinctive about this wave of acculturation is the fact that it is taking place in the context of China’s current rise. Since Sinic civilization has engaged in acculturation processes with other civilizations before, this wave of acculturation is the latest episode in this history. It is also a novel recombination of civilizations. From the mid-nineteenth century until very recently, acculturation easily shaded into Westernization at a time when the state of China was weak internationally. This wave promises to be a much more balanced, two-way process of acculturation.
This thesis studies a selection of leading English literature on Sinicization, and attempts to compare and analyze their conclusions. The authors covered are Daniel A. Bell, Roger Ames, Wang Gungwu, and William A. Callahan. Each author covers a different area respectively: political change and democratization in China; a comparison of the philosophical underpinnings of Sinic and Western civilizations; Chinese living overseas as agents of Sinicization; and the manipulation of Sinicization discourse within Greater China. It is hoped that this thesis, which attempts to synthesize this literature, will help shed light on the question of what China’s rise means for the evolution of Sinic civilization in today’s world.
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