Studying China’s political economy as an outsider has never been wholly easy. This is partly because of long standing challenges that have more or less persisted over four (and a bit) decades of studying China; access to officials, the reliability of data, trying to aggregate and generalise diversity, studying (often rapidly) moving targets, and so on. The tendency for debates about China to be based on expectations of future intent and action doesn’t always help either. Over recent years, though, things seem to have become even more difficult. Researchers have always had to be aware of the consequences of political changes in China, and what this can mean for the ability to do certain things in China and with Chinese partners. Now, political changes in the West are having an impact too through the increased use (and arguably dominance) of national security lenses to try and understand the drivers and consequences of Chinese international economic interactions.

Before outlining the nature of these challenges, and also thinking of ways of mitigating them, it is important to consider how and why different perspectives on China (and ways of studying it) emerge. In addition to the question of generalist versus specialist perspectives, does the location of the researcher matter? And does the nature of the first interaction with China continue to shape interests, assumptions, and research questions long after the date of that original encounter?

Shaun Breslin is Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. He is also Co-Editor of The Pacific Review, and currently academic lead on the EU Horizon funded project, EuroHub4Sino.