China has long been a country with many ethnic groups and multiple cultural traditions,therefore,China studies must include researches on non-Han ethnic groups and their cultures.It is based on such a common understanding that the School of China Studies of Renmin University of China has been actively promoting and organizing researches on the language,history,geography,religion and culture of ethnic minority groups of China's frontier regions ever since its inception.The school has also made the decision to establish the Institute for Historical and Philological Studies of China's Western Regions.With strong support from the university as well as the society,the Institute has now been established after a year of preparation.We are now launching the“Monograph Series of Historical and Philological Studies of China's Western Regions”.These publications present academic approaches,pursuits and achievements of the Institute's members and their colleagues and friends all over the world.We hope the Monograph Series will serve the scholarly community as an academic platform for rallying scholars both within and outside China to improve and ensure the flourishing of historical and philological studies of China's western regions.
Three main considerations prompted the School of China Studies at Renmin University of China to choose the historical and philological study of China's western regions as one of its core research fields to be especially promoted.
First,the development of research on China's western regions was inseparable from the formation of China as a nation state.During the late Qing,the aggression of Western colonialist and imperialist powers brought about unprecedented and severe crisis in China with the insecurity of its frontier regions.It was during such a time many Chinese scholars devoted their time and energy in“the geographic and historic studies of the northwest regions.”Their work made significant contributions to preventing Chinese territory from being taken away by western colonialists,to the establishment of China as modern nation state,and to defining the national borders of China.Since such research was vital to the formation of China's identity as a nation state and the definition of its national boundary,it should be sincerely viewed as an integral part of China studies.It is particularly necessary for us to deepen our own understanding of China and its cultural traditions and give it a new definition befitting contemporary circumstance by means of promoting China studies in the time of modernization and globalization.It goes without saying that studies of China's western regions should be continuously promoted as an important component of China studies in this particular time period for facing the new challenge of modernization and globalization.
Secondly,the study of China's western regions,specially the historical and philological study of the region,is a highly internationalized scholarship that involves many different academic disciplines.Putting emphasis on historical and philological studies of China's western regions will advance the goal of promoting China studies into an internationalized discipline of high scholarly standard.In the West,historical and philological study of China's western regions is a field with both a long tradition and great prestige.
In China,due to the lack of new materials and methodological innovation,the“geographic and historic studies of the northwest regions”began to decline after the Jiaqing and Daoguang reign of the Qing dynasty.Meanwhile,study of China's western regions in the West made great progress along new paths.As represented by the French scholar Paul Pelliot,a generation of well-known European,Russian,Japanese and American Sinologists and others of Central Asian studies took possession of large numbers of precious ancient manus and artifacts from China's western regions,especially from Dunhuang and Turfan.Not only that,they also implemented new historico-philological approaches to deal with these newly acquired manus in various languages and s.