This paper explores the development of computational social science (CSS) in China via the model of contested field formation. This model highlights that Chinese CSS emerges amid tensions between institutionalization-driven structural forces and entrenched epistemological traditions, defying both the Western diffusion and the top-down dominance models. The model highlights that three external structural pressures fuel CSS's expansion in Chinese universities: the state's New Liberal Arts (xinwenke) policy, a central-government’s higher education reform that pushes humanities and social sciences toward interdisciplinary, digital, and now AI+ transformation; a graduate labor market crisis that renders CSS training a career credential for humanities and social sciences students; and growing platform data and computational infrastructure enabling innovative research designs. These pressures face two internal constraints: a faculty shortage hindering effective New Liberal Arts implementation on the one hand and, on the other, the epistemological pushback from indigenization-oriented and autonomous-knowledge-system discussions that pivot on whether CSS can generate signature Chinese concepts or merely import universalist categories.
Chengpang Lee (Thu,) studied this question.