The Revival of Political Science in China: A Review of the Journal Zhengzhixue Yanjiu

Abstract

This article will survey the first three issues of the journal Zhengzhixue yanjiu (Political Science Research) for 1986 in order to give some idea of the state of political science in China today. Zhengzhixue yanjiu is the organ of the Political Science Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Although that Institute was set up in 1980, together with the reestablishment of the Chinese Political Science Association,1 it was not until 1985 that a regular journal was published. Indeed, a consistent theme of the articles in the journal has been the undeveloped nature of the field and the fact that the vast majority of universities do not yet have political science departments. Before 1949, 45 of the 200 or so universities in China included political science departments.2 In 1952 these were abolished in accordance with Soviet practice. It was felt at that time that the separate discipline of political science was 'bourgeois'. Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy had for long criticised Western political science for separating politics from economics, preferring to see their integration under the rubric of political economy. But abolishing political science departments was not just a question of emulating Soviet orthodoxy. Clearly, some cadres felt, they had conducted a successful war without the benefit of officer training as was provided in Guomindang academies. They did not need to study military science, why then should they study political science? Of course, some politics was taught in the years before 1978 but this tended to be rather narrow studies of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought. For over thirty years there was hostility to the general discipline of political science. Indeed, it was probably because of general distaste among academics for the kind of 'politics' which was 'in command' and which was taught in the years of the Cultural Revolution that hostility towards the academic study of