Academic Transformation Of The Research On The Chinese Frontier Political Affairs In1930s And1940s

During the1930s and1940s, China faced the most serious threat to its survival in modern times because of the Japanese invasion, while nationalism was surging. Chinese expressed their patriotic emotions in the frontier areas. The coterie magazine New Asia, published against a background of upsurge of nationalism in the1930s, was a representative publications of academic research of frontiers. Bianzhenggonglun, edited and published by scholars with vast knowledge of Western natural and social sciences, was also a representative publications of academic research of frontiers in the1940s.Although the two magazines treated frontiers as the objective of research, they had distinct differences in the contents of research, authors, theories, methods, etc. These differences may witness academic transformation from the1930s to the1940s. As for the contents of research, the former magazine focused on the discourses of research about history and geography of frontiers and of the dangerous situation at that time, however, the discourses were transformed to the systematic and scientific research used by the latter, which applied theories of Western social science. Regarding the authors, they transformed from staff of Kuomintang government to staff of universities and research institutes, who had knowledge of Western natural and social sciences. Taking distinctiveness of frontiers into consideration, these staff applied theories and methods of Western natural and social sciences to do research, and at the same time, they constructed the Chinese research system of frontiers and frontier political affairs. For the research methods, the former adopted many a method used in traditional research of history and geography of frontiers, especially methods employed in research of history and geography of the northwest China, which had characteristics of the transitional times. Nevertheless, the latter attempted to construct the discipline of frontier political affairs. As to research of frontier areas, the former attached importance to the Northwest China, while the latter’s study scope began to cover the whole country.