An unplanned journey: Contingent events and the study of China

Contingent events shaped my career in China studies. As the field expanded, scholars took up jobs in the academic disciplines, which led away from ‘area studies’ to more specialized work. When China opened to the West, students encountered China less as a remote abstraction and more as a place with real people in all their diversity. My involvement with human rights led me to engage with a distinctive set of Chinese people, from whom I learned much. The essay reflects on problems of self-censorship in China studies and asks how deeply political science in China differs from political science in the West.