With What Voice Does China Speak? Sinology, Orientalism and the Debate on Sinologism

Abstract The arrival of postcolonial theory in China and the country’s global rise came with the realization that its self-image is often distorted by Western ideological discourse, conveyed through Western Sinology. Drawing from Edward Said’s Orientalism , some Chinese scholars have classified the ideological dimensions of Western Sinology as Sinologism, and have pointed out its implications for China’s capacity to think of itself on its own terms. The concept has sparked debate mainly inside Chinese academia about the objective quality of Western Sinology. This article will attempt a critical overview of two major formulations of Sinologism, underlining its major presuppositions and placing the notion in the broader context of China’s anxieties of “academic colonization” by Western intellectual practices. It will conclude by arguing that attempts to discredit Western Sinology rely on some problematic assumptions and suggests East-West comparative studies as an alternative way of dialectically constructing Chinese identity.