China should establish an “original” knowledge system regarding the history of its border regions to mitigate security risks from “hostile forces in the West”, according to a senior scholar at a prominent state-run think tank.
Fan Enshi of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) also warned about the threat of “de-Sinicisation” in US-led historical perspectives, calling for a shift from “fragmented research” towards systematic domestic theories that could better project Chinese influence internationally.
The efforts were “bringing more uncertain and unpredictable risks and challenges to the security, stability and development of our country’s border regions”, he said in the article published last week.
Fan went on to note that those circumstances necessitated a robust approach to developing the country’s indigenous academic system of Chinese borderland studies. However, “some fundamental concepts … remain unclear”, he said.
