Abstract
This paper focuses on the theoretical and methodological issues in the study of East Asian Sinographic texts. Previous research has generally followed four basic models: the “Sinocentric perspective,” “influence studies,” the “challenge-response theory,” and the “internal development theory.” These models reflect nineteenth- and twentieth-century modes of thought, but their limitations have become increasingly evident today. In response, the author proposes the concept of the “Sinographic Cultural Sphere as Method,” which emphasizes viewing East Asian Sinographic texts as an integrated whole while recognizing both differences within similarities and similarities within differences. This approach seeks to move beyond the dichotomy of center and periphery, advocating for multidirectional book circulation and mutual interaction. In the era of globalization, research on East Asian Sinographic texts should focus on identifying commonalities through particularities, thereby contributing to cultural exchange, integration, and the development of East Asian scholarship in the 21st century.
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Keywords: Study of East Asian Sinographic Texts, Sinocentric Perspective, Influence Studies, Challenge–Response Theory, Internal Development Theory, Sinographic Cultural Sphere as Method
Introduction
Since the late 19th century, East Asian scholarship has gradually started to break away from traditional models due to the influence of Western academia and completed its “modern” transition to varying degree. The “modern” transition essentially refers to application of the theories, perspectives, and methodologies of Western scholarship to the study of East Asian materials. Compared to traditional East Asian scholarly methods, these theories and methods were clearly more scientific. Up until the mid-1970s, the prevailing consensus in East Asian humanities was that traditional East Asian scholarship lacked usable theoretical and methodological resources. Thus, it was natural to analyze and evaluate East Asian literature, history, religion, thought, and art using Western theories. On the other hand, some scholars disregarded western theories and methodologies altogether, indulging instead in the fantasy of traditional scholarship, satisfied with being a “citation-based critic,” deaf to criticisms from afar and blind to humanities crisis right in front of them. Ruan Yuan 阮元 (1764-1849) of the Qing 淸 (1644-1912) dynasty once said: “The rise and fall of academic thought should be judged over a span of hundred years.”
1 Hence, the 21st century is the time to thoroughly examine and reflect on a century of scholarly gains and losses. And the focus should be on theories and methods.
To begin with, we need to review the models of East Asian studies that have been popular over the past century, which can be summarized into the following four types. I will be drawing more heavily on materials from literary studies as it is my area of expertise.
I. Sinocentrism
In East Asia, this is first and foremost a deeply rooted concept among the Chinese: surrounding cultures are viewed merely as extensions or reflections of Chinese culture at the periphery. This resulted in a clearly hierarchical network of relationships, reinforced by the tributary system and its associated social psychology. As David C. Kang 康燦雄 put it: “China was the dominant state in the East Asian system … Other countries in East Asia emulated China’s practices to varying degrees and accepted China’s regional centrality.”
2 This perspective has directly influenced people’s attitudes toward and interpretations of China’s relationships with its neighbours, both historically and today. In the late Qing, Kuang Zhouyi 況周頤 (1859-1926) mentioned the Vietnamese writer Nguyễn Miên Thẩm 阮綿審 (1819-1970) and the Chosŏn writer Pak Ŭn 朴誾 (1479-1504) in his
Huifeng cihua 蕙風詞話, concluding that “though the customs of overseas lands are different, they also excel in verse and song, which sufficiently proves the flourishing civilizing power of our dynasty.”
3 This kind of approach has been common in past East Asian studies, and not limited to Chinese scholars. Japanese sinologist Kanda Kiichirō 神田喜一郎 (1897-1984) published
Nihon tenshi shiwa 日本填詞史話 (
A History of Japanese Ci Poetry,1965), but the main title of the book is
Nihon ni okeru Chūgoku bungaku日本における中國文學 which translates to
Chinese Literature in Japan. In the preface, he clearly points out that the focus of the book is “Chinese literature in Japan, in other words, Japanese Sinographic literature as a tributary of Chinese literature.”
4 This worldview creates a binary between center and periphery, mainstream and tributary. The same pattern appears in the field of historiography, for example, in Fujitsuka Chikashi’s 藤塚隣 (1879-1948) masterpiece –
Shinchō bunka tōden no kenkyū 清朝文化東傳研究 (
Research on the Eastward Spread of Qing Culture, 1975). Although the research is on
silhak 實學 (practical learning) of the Chosŏn dynasty, its focus is on the eastward shift of the Qian-Jia 乾嘉 and Daoist 道學 schools of thought during the Qing dynasty.
Within the Sinosphere of East Asia, it is an established historical fact that China occupies a central and originary position as a cultural suzerain. East Asian studies based on Sinocentric model undeniably demonstrates this feature to the fullest extent, revealing the breadth and richness of the hierarchical structure. However, at the same time, this model can also obscure the autonomy and diversity of other regions within the Sinosphere, overlook their innovative characteristics, values, and meanings, and and tends to use China as the sole benchmark for determining right and wrong, superior and inferior. The latent influence of this model still exists to varying degrees, explicitly or implicitly, in the consciousness East Asian scholars (especially Chinese scholars) to this day. In order to re-explore the world of East Asian Sinographic texts in a more neutral way, Chinese scholars should draw on the ways in which modern European and American scholars reflect on “Eurocentrism” when they engage with issues of “Sinocentrism.”
II. Influence Studies
This approach was promoted by French comparatists in the 19th century and represents the theory and methodology of the French school of comparative literature. Although the theory itself claims to explore the mutual permeation of themes, books or emotions between two or more literary traditions, in actual practice, it often reduces the analysis to how the “receiver”—whether consciously or unconsciously—identifies with or is subsumed into the system of the “sender” or “pioneer.” Due to the tremendous achievements of the 19th century French literature and its prestigious standing in Europe, this comparative research model has tended to further reinforce the cultural brilliance of France—or of the cultural “metropole.”
This methodology was most commonly employed in the history of literary studies. For instance, Danish scholar Gerog Brandes’s (1842-1927) influential work
Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature rejected the idea of treating any nation’s literary phenomena as isolated or unique. He also opposed to writing the literary history with a culturally closed-minded perspective. He had a famous saying quoted by Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881-1936): “Such mental ‘deafness’ has thus led to our ‘dumbness.’”
5 But when Brandes himself applied comparative methods to literary history, he arguably took things too far. In comparing Danish and German writers, he noted that once Denmark “produces a truly great work that can be called ‘mine’ and if it is recognized by the world” he would happily “place the laurel crown it has won at the feet” of the great tradition of German literature.
6
Japan had a similar scholarly classic: Kojima Noriyuki’s 小島憲之 (1913-1998)
Jōdai Nihon bungaku to Chūgoku bungaku 上代日本文學と中國文學 (
Ancient Japanese Literature and Chinese Literature) subtitled as “Investigation of Comparative Literary Study Based on Source Analysis” 出典論をとする比較文學的考察, in which “source analysis” 出典論 refers to “crénologie” 淵泉論, the study of origins and sources.
7 Japanese scholar Nogami Toyoichirō 野上豐一郎 (1883-1950) in his
Hikaku Bungaku Ron’yō 比較文學論要 (
Essentials of Comparative Literature) elaborated on theory of “crénologie” proposed by French comparative literature scholar Paul Van Tieghem (1871-1959): “This becomes the starting point of research—that is, the search for the sources and the exploration of original text. The so-called “crénologie” is about tracing the origins of literary influence, examining the themes and ideas in works, and accounting for certain events.”
8 When “Sinocentrism” met “influence studies” of French comparative literature, the two aligned seamlessly, becoming the most common model in East Asian comparative literature. East Asian or European literatures are often portrayed as an appendage of Chinese or French literature, and researchers tend to downplay the uniqueness and originality of Sinosphere or Francophone writers, adopting a somewhat condescending and paternalistic attitude towards them.
This model often rests content with identifying a source or influence but fails to ask deeper questions, such as why a certain writer or nation chose one source over another, or even why they selected certain elements within a shared source as the blueprint for their own creative work. Such questions often fall outside the scope of inquiry for scholars working within this model. Clearly, this is insufficient.
III. Challenge-Response Theory
This model was developed by British historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975) in his A Study of History, where he formulated a general pattern of civilizational development. Western sinologists or Orientalists frequently adopted this framework for their academic research. A representative figure in East Asian studies, John K. Fairbank (1907-1991), adapted the model slightly into what became known as the “Western impact-Chinese response” theory. In this model, the “challenge” side is active and dominant, while the “response” side is passive and reluctant. A civilization’s ability to survive depends on whether it can effectively respond to Western challenges (with all the credit, of course, going to the challenger). Conversely, if a civilization lacks the capacity or strength to respond, its fate is seen as inevitably declining toward extinction, with its only path forward being to “assimilate” to the West. This theory embodies Eurocentric worldview that emphasizes conflict and confrontation among civilizations. Under this premise, the only viable path for East Asian scholarship was to adopt Western theories. Since the modernization of East Asian academia primarily followed Western models (with the possible exception of classical textual scholarship), this viewpoint became deeply entrenched and persists to this day.
Although this model produced many scholarly achievements (particularly in the European and American academia), its limitations also attracted attention from perceptive Western thinkers. Paul A. Cohen’s Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past 在中國發現歷史 (1984) was a direct critique of this model. In a later summary (2019), Cohen identified three major theoretical and practical shortcomings of the “Western impact–Chinese response” paradigm:
1. “to presuppose that the 19th-century Sino-Western interaction to be a one-way street, with all vehicles moving from West to the East, which is an oversimplification.”
2. “to ignore aspects of 19th-century China that had little or nothing to do with the West”, and overlooking “outcomes shaped by internal Chinese factors.”
3. Because the model emphasizes “intentional responses,” it overstresses intellectual, cultural, and psychological causes, at the expense of social, political, and economic ones.
Overall, although the model “has significantly corrected earlier tendencies to ignore Chinese ideas and agency, it also encouraged a skewed, distorted, and one-sided view of 19th-century China.”
9
Cohen’s theoretical standpoints and methodological approach had strongly challenged “Western impact-Chinese response” model and spurred a wave of new scholarship that sought to “discover history in China.” In the East, Japanese scholar Mizoguchi Yūzō 溝口雄三 (1932-2010) proposed the idea of “using China as a method.” His goal was “To start from within China itself and, based on China’s actual historical conditions, attempt to discover an alternative principle, i.e. a ‘Chinese principle,’ in contrast to European ones.”
10 Also, using the work of Li Zhuowu 李卓吾 (1527-1602) and Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610-1695) as case studies, Mizoguchi traced a subtle intellectual thread running from the mid-Ming to the mid-Qing, offering an alternative way of interpreting Chinese intellectual history.
Yet, even as late as 2006, scholars like Liu Zaifu 劉再復 and Li Zehou 李澤厚 (1930-2021) still argued that Mizoguchi’s approach “negated the dominant external stimuli while focusing only on internal developments, producing a partial and inaccurate version of history.” They even claimed: “Without the Opium Wars, the first Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, and the October Revolution as external stimuli not even a hundred Huang Zongxis would make a difference.”
11 This sentiment reflects the long-standing hold of the challenge-response model on scholarly thinking.
Essentially, this model represents the theoretical standpoints of “nationalism.” Since the 1970s, most literary histories written in Korea have adopted this position, emphasizing the independence and uniqueness of Korean literature and deliberately severing its connections with external sources, especially with Chinese literature. In recent years, this perspective has started to be questioned by Korean scholars such as Paek Nakch’ŏng 白樂晴 and Ch’oe Wŏnsik 崔元植. For instance, Ch’oe lamented: “Lately, I have felt more acutely how astonishingly ignorant our society is about China and Japan.”
12
In contrast to Chinese responses to Western scholarship—which range from imitation to resistance—the more pervasive problem in Chinese academia has been a disregard for East Asia altogether. Korean scholar Paek Yŏngsŏ 白永瑞 once raised a question: Is there such a thing as ‘Asia’ in China? In his view: “Chinese intellectuals lack a vision of ‘Asian-ness,’ and in particular lack the perspective of considering China within the broader context of East Asia.”
13 Chinese scholar Sun Ge 孫歌 also pointed out: “For Chinese intellectuals, a seemingly self-evident question has always been unresolved: Why must we discuss East Asia? Yet for intellectuals in neighboring East Asian countries, China’s vague attitude is seen as a form of Sinocentrism.”
14 The rise of nationalism easily fosters egocentrism, which runs counter to the dominant trend of globalization in today’s world. A closely related belief holds that only members of a particular nation are qualified to appreciate, study, or judge their own culture and literature.
Renowned musician Daniel Barenboim once remarked: “It was understandable in 1920 that Germans felt Beethoven and Brahms were quintessentially German… but when they claimed only Aryans could truly appreciate Beethoven, that’s where I drew the line.”
15 In Japan, similar sentiments linger, that is, the idea that only Japanese people can truly understand or study Japanese literature and art. As recently as this century, Japanese scholar Numano Mitsuyoshi 沼野充義 specifically pointed out: “We still harbor some rather ridiculous notions … and worse yet, some believe that foreigners are inherently incapable of grasping the subtleties of Japanese literature.”
16 Thefore, he emphasized that “in the case of literature, we should not always cling to the narrow label of ‘J literature,’ literature should be ‘W’: world literature.”
17 In China, some scholars still argue that foreigners are not qualified to appreciate, research and evaluate Chinese literature. From my point of view, such views are not only outdated and absurd, but also dangerous if allowed to spread in society. Lack of cultural inclusivity easily brings about exclusivism or even xenophobia. This kind of cultural exclusivism easily breeds xenophobia or even hatred of outsiders. The racial extermination policies of the Nazis in World War II had widespread support from those who believed only Aryans could appreciate Beethoven. It is hard to say this belief did not help bring about such horrific outcomes.
In response to the shortcomings of the models outlined above, I had proposed the concept of “Sinosphere as methodology”
18 in 2009 and have since striven to put it into practice. I have published books including
Zuo wei fangfa de Han wenhua quan 作為方法的漢文化圈 (
Reading the Sinosphere as the Methodology for Studying the Sinosphere, 2011) and
Dongya Han wenxue yanjiu de fangfa yu shijian 東亞漢文學研究的方法與實踐 (
Methodologies and Practices in the Study of East Asian Sinographic Literature, 2011).
19 Reading the Sinosphere as the Methodology for Studying the Sinosphere emphasizes the unity of a main melody with polyphony. Without a “main melody,” we would not be speaking of a “Sino-” cultural sphere. But without “polyphony,” we cannot speak of a cultural “sphere” at all. While any specific study might focus on one side or the other, scholars must remain conscious of both, even the side that is not their current focus. Only in this way can we avoid partial or one-sided scholarship, resist the expansionist impulses of cultural imperialism, and open up the closed loop of nationalism.
Sinosphere as methodology aims to provide an interpretative framework for specific cultural phenomena and aspires to reveal new meanings from the complexity of cultural interactions. Behind every method lies a certain theoretical position, and the core stance of “the Sinosphere as method” is as follows:
1. To treat Sinographic texts across East Asia as a unified whole, rather than approaching them along national or regional lines;
2. To examine differences within sameness and sameness within difference, beginning from within East Asia itself;
3. To highlight the reciprocal construction between internal East Asian dynamics and external forces, moving beyond any single model, whether Eurocentrism, Sinocentrism, or ethnocentrism.
The Sinographic cultural sphere, which developed from the Han dynasty onward and persisted until the end of the 19th century, was based on the Chinese writing system. Whether East Asia prior to the 20th century can be considered a “civilizational community” has been a matter of debate. Some scholars, like Nishijima Sadao 西嶋定生 (1919-1998), view East Asia as a unified world, identifying four key shared elements: Chinese character culture, Confucianism, the ritsuryō legal system 律令制, and Buddhism.
20 American scholar William Theodore de Bary likewise treats East Asia as an integrated whole in his book
East Asian Civilizations, arguing that China, Japan, and the Korean peninsula: “Represent a civilization shared across East Asia, one that allows for local identities to be maintained even while drawing on common traditions.”
21 Rhoads Murphey (1919-2012) takes it further, suggesting that this civilizational community continues even today: “Despite material and cultural differences, East Asia is clearly a cohesive unit, with more commonalities than differences, forming the world’s largest cultural and economic community today.”
22 Others, however, argue that East Asia has always been a multipolar region, lacking any sustained or coherent identity. Ge Zhaoguang 葛兆光, for example, famously claimed that there was “no China after the 17th century,” and argued that: “If there ever was a sense of East Asian identity, it likely existed only before the mid-17th century.”
23 Still others push the disintegration of that unity back even further, to the Tang dynasty, for example, in Wang Zhenping’s 王貞平
Tang China in Multi-Polar Asia: A History of Diplomacy and War, which, as its title suggests, describes a Tang-era East Asia that was already “multipolar. Each of these views can find historical evidence and textual support. After all, historical phenomena can be approached by focusing on their similarities (“viewed from their unity”) or their differences (“viewed from their diversity”), yielding different conclusions. This is not unique to East Asia. In the West, for example, we see endless divisions—religious, political, artistic, moral, ceremonial—but from another angle, Europe also appears as a whole. Despite political fragmentation, Europe has long been called a Christian civilization, which suggests some form of consensus. The formation of the European Union in 1993 (Europäische Union or Union européenne) marked a concrete step toward integration. This supranational union of sovereign states, along with its associated political science and economics, represents a major European contribution to future world civilization. The foundation of this union is shared cultural roots: a “cultural Europe.” In 2012, the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an affirmation of its contribution to human civilization. To speak of wholeness does not negate diversity, and to emphasize difference does not deny unity. In East Asia, what historically bound the region together was not politics, economics, or military might, but Sinocultural sphere. The shared pursuit of Sinospheric culture as the highest form of civilization established a common set of core values and created a coherent unity—one that endured until the late 19th century. Even today, the cultural “roots” of East Asia continue to thrive in popular society.
Allow me to recount a personal experience to illustrate this idea on the level of phenomenon and lived experience. Twenty years ago, while in Korea, I visited the ancestral home of Yi Hang-no 李恒老 (1792-1868), a great Confucian scholar from the late Chosŏn period. The estate was maintained by descendants from his daughter’s line, whose family name, as it happened, was also Chang 張. Upon seeing me, Mr. Chang asked me a question: “Among all those with the surname Chang in history, who is the greatest?” He immediately answered his own question: “It is Zhang Zai 張載 (1020-1077) of the Song 宋 dynasty (960-1279).” Then he quoted four lines by Zhang Zai, famously known as the “Four Sentences of Hengqu” 橫渠四句, which encapsulate the Confucian ideal of a scholar’s life mission and moral outlook: “To set the mind in Heaven and Earth. To establish the Way for the people. To continue the lost teachings of past sages. To bring peace to all future generations” 為天地立心，為生民立命，為往聖繼絕學，為萬世開太平. That the image of a Confucian thinker who lived eight centuries ago in China could be so vividly etched into the heart of a contemporary Korean individual speaks volumes. Does this not clearly demonstrate the shared cultural root of East Asian people?
If we agree that a Sinosphere (or “East Asian world,” “East Asian civilization,” “Sinographic cultural sphere”) existed throughout East Asian history, then we have every reason to treat it as a legitimate object of study—an organically interconnected unit for scholarly thought and narration. At the heart of this cultural sphere was the Chinese script (漢字), which for centuries served as its primary vehicle. Over a long historical period, it generated an immense body of texts—Sinographic literature—that expresses a broadly shared spiritual core. This, in turn, established a lasting cultural cohesion at a foundational level. This “literary community” of knowledge and culture or “republic of letters” may at first glance seem loosely bound. But in reality, it was held together by a powerful, resilient spiritual thread. And the voices within this community were never singular: they were polyphonic even cacophonous. If research methodology is the “counterpart” of the object studied, then the proposal of “the Sinosphere as method” is perfectly aligned with its object.
In European and American academia, similar concepts are beginning to take shape as well. Some scholars have pointed out that while there are East Asian Studies departments in the West, there is still no such thing as a discipline of “East Asian Thought” in its own right. As a result, there is now a growing demand to study East Asian Sinographic literature (in the broadest sense) as an integrated whole. Yet, on the practical level, due to the entrenched momentum of older models, actual breakthroughs in scholarship have remained relatively limited. In 2007, David C. Kang surveyed existing East Asian studies literature and identified two main characteristics, or rather, two major shortcomings. First, it is extremely rare to “research East Asia treating it as a single unit and reveal interstate interaction patterns and their similarities and differences.” Second, “majority of studies exhibit an obvious nationalist bias, and this nationalist slant is especially pronounced.”
24 From my perspective, beyond these two shortcomings, there is a third one: Even in works that have tried to overcome nationalism, the methodology still often results in mechanical juxtaposition—a simple stacking of historical phenomena from different countries. Below is an example from the field of literary studies.
Victor H. Mair’s edited volume The Columbia History of Chinese Literature (2001) includes, at the end of Part VII, “Popular and Peripheral Manifestations,” three chapters on the reception of Chinese literature in Korea, Japan and Vietnam. But the approach resembles an annotated checklist—more a catalog of names and works than an integrated literary history. The structure is a series of bilateral transmission and influence cases between China and each neighboring country. Similarly, Fujii Shōzō’s 藤井省三 Chūgokugo-ken bungakushi 中國語圈文學史 (A Literary History of the Sinographic Sphere, 2011), despite appearing to take a pan-East Asian approach, ends up merely describing literary phenomena in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and translations of Haruki Murakami’s 村上春樹. The book simply parallels and lists facts, without weaving them into a coherent whole. This method of compiling local histories into a side-by-side arrangement unintentionally falls back on the old-world history model of the 19th century and fails to respond to the new wave of global history research from the last two or three decades.
The proposal of “the Sinosphere as method” consists broadly of the following key points:
1. Treat Sinographic texts in the Sinosphere as a unified body.
No matter which type or national corpus of literature is being studied, the point of reference should be the whole. If one observes similarities, these constitute the “great commonality” (da tong 大同) within the Sinosphere, marking it as distinct from other cultural spheres. If one focuses on differences, these are the “small differences” (xiao yi 小異) within the Sinosphere, helping us recognize the unique features of each region or tradition.
2. Recognize multidirectional “book circulation” as the main mode of cultural transfer.
Within the Sinosphere, whether it was cultural transmission or the migration of ideas, it happened mainly through the multidirectional flow of books, not just through unilateral “eastward spread” or “westward diffusion.” It was through direct or indirect reading, and even misreading, of books that people across the region advanced the development and transformation of both their local and the broader culture.
3. Take human experience and spiritual life as the ultimate object of inquiry.
This means overcoming binary oppositions like center vs. periphery, emphasizing interaction and mutual subjectivity. The point of departure should be the struggles people faced in their lives and their efforts to transcend existential crises. The goal is to humanize the humanities: to perceive the pulse of life behind the texts.
4. Prioritize the interpretation of cultural meaning.
Special attention must be paid to how the same texts have different fates in different contexts; how modes of thought vary across regions, classes, genders, and historical moments, both in terms of unity and diversity.
If we say that “method” includes both directionality and rules or procedures, then at present, “the Sinosphere as method” is still largely oriented toward the directional side. To develop its procedural dimension, we need much more extensive and targeted research on specific types of texts and problems. This is a long-term and formidable task. In my own work, I have made modest attempts to explore this dimension of rules and practices. For example, in studies of East Asian travelogues and poetic exchanges 筆談唱和 I advocate for a long-duration (longue durée) perspective and in East Asian book history and intellectual history, I emphasize circular flows of texts. In Sinographic literary history, I have proposed approaches like “dual reading” 雙重閱讀 and the “CD reading method” CD閱讀法. I have also theorized models such as “form-spirit transformation” 形神互易 to analyze changes in cultural imagery across East Asia and introduced frameworks like “literary harmony” 文和 and “literary warfare” 文戰 to examine diplomatic uses of poetry and prose among East Asian states.
The proposal of “the Sinosphere as method” is a scholarly theory and methodological vision that moves in step with the globalizing currents of our time. It aligns closely with the direction of global history research. In global history, the particularity of the nation-state does not take precedence. Instead, a more appropriate unit of analysis is often a cultural sphere. Regarding “globalization,” I have previously proposed that it must be understood in the plural form—as “globalizations.” This idea appeared over a decade ago in the work of German scholar Jürgen Osterhammel.
25 However, when he used the term “plural,” it was mainly to contrast with the singular, to highlight the diversity of globalization processes. While my focus on the other hand, is to use this plural concept to emphasize three historically distinct types of globalization, moving backward through time.
Tracing from now to the past, to put it simple, first, the globalization of the past twenty years: an economic globalization marked by its fragility. Second, the globalization of the past two hundred years: a colonial globalization marked by its dominance and coerciveness. Third, the globalization of the past two thousand years: a conceptual or ideological globalization, characterized by culture. This third form, a cultural globalization, is what the ancient Chinese envisioned. In
Zhou yi 周易 (
The Book of Changes), it is expressed as: “Civilization is regulated with human culture … the world is transformed by observing human culture” 文明以止，人文也 … 觀乎人文，以化成天下.
26 In
Li ji 禮記 (The Book of Rites), “Liyun” 禮運 chapter, it is said: “When the Great Way is practiced, the world is shared by all” 大道之行也，天下為公.
27 It is the third type of globalization that we need to promote and practice, which is the true ideal of humanity. The ultimate realization of globalization must therefore be pluralistic and diverse, not singular and standardized. Different civilizations, following the principles of “not loving only one’s own kin, not raising only one’s own children” and “not keeping knowledge for oneself, nor acting solely for one’s own benefit,” can all find their place within a global family. In our own time, extensive global economic activity has already laid the groundwork for globalization and created countless opportunities for civilizations to encounter, exchange, clash, and reconcile. If we can apply the idea of “conceptual globalization” in our everyday practices, then humanity may indeed take meaningful steps toward such an ideal. The proposal of “the Sinosphere as method” is one such attempt, emerging from an academic standpoint but aligned with the broader direction described above. By treating East Asian Sinographic texts as a unified whole, yet transcending the constraints of traditional philology, this approach aims to ensure that theoretical insight and practical experience enhance one another. Through sustained dialogue with Western scholarship, we can form our own theories and methods, and we earnestly hope to establish an East Asian scholarship that is independent, but not isolated from the world of academia, self-reliant, but not exclusionary. This would be an East Asian scholarship that takes its rightful place in the global community of knowledge.
Notes
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