CHINA STUDIEScase, as the special autonomy enjoyed by the for-
mer British colony produced a freer research at-
mosphere than in the rest of the country.) China
specialists now had to share the stage with many
sociologists who did not have area studies training.
With data more readily available and collaboration
with Chinese counterparts possible, area studies
training and familiarity with the arcane techniques
developed in the 1960s and 1970s were no longer
so important. Many non-China specialists found
the opportunity to study the world’s most popu-
lous society increasingly attractive. These changes
have been beneficial for China specialists within
sociology. Given their small numbers and the com-
plexity of Chinese society, there is more than
enough ‘‘turf’’ to be shared with sociologists not
trained in China studies. And these changes have
reduced the intellectual isolation of the specialists,
from both colleagues in China and those in their
own departments.
As a result of these changes, Chinese sociolo-
gists ended their isolation from world sociology,
and Western sociologists conducting research on
China escaped from a highly constrained environ-
ment and began to produce work that was less
idiosyncratic. It should be noted, however, that
sociological research in China is not without lim-
its, either for foreign researchers or for Chinese.
Even in the most liberal phases of the initial re-
form decade from 1979 to 1989, some topics
remained taboo, some locales were off limits, and
bureaucratic obstruction and interference were
constant facts of life. Nonetheless, even for for-
eigners it became possible to conduct extended
ethnographic studies, carry out probability sample
surveys, and gain access for secondary analysis to
the raw data from census and survey studies con-
ducted by Chinese, experiences that those who
were studying the Soviet Union before its collapse
could only envy. The result was a new spurt of
research activity and publication that enriched our
knowledge of Chinese social life immensely. (For a
review of Western research during the decade
after 1979, see Walder 1989. For an overview of
developments within Chinese sociology during
that period, see Lu 1989.)
However, the political fallout from the 1989
Tiananmen massacre raised new problems for the
sociological study of China. At least some conser-
vatives within the Chinese leadership used the
crackdown following the massacre to attack soci-
ology and other newly revived social sciences in
terms reminiscent of 1952 and 1957. The field was
once again accused of being an ideological Trojan
horse designed to spread doubts about socialist
orthodoxy. Some sociology departments were not
allowed to enroll new students, while others had
their enrollment targets cut. While these restric-
tions eased after a year or two, new and serious
threats to collaborative research projects contin-
ued through the 1990s. Edicts designed to restrict
and maintain strict political control over survey
projects involving foreign collaboration were passed
in secret in 1990 and 1995, resulting in the confis-
cation of survey data already collected in one
instance and delays and torpedoing of projects in
others. (The data confiscated after the 1990 secret
edict were eventually released to the researchers
involved, and other stalled projects resumed, but
only after several years of tense negotiations.) In
1998 an international collaborative survey project
in social gerontology was publicly attacked within
China for allegedly endangering the health of
China’s elderly and having a concealed aim of
enabling foreigners to profit from the ‘‘genetic
secrets’’ of the Chinese people. Only after a vigor-
ous public defense from both foreign and Chinese
researchers was the disputed project saved. These
developments mean that researchers who embark
on sociological research within China on even
quite nonpolitical topics face some risk that they
will not be able to complete their projects due to
political interference.Despite the unpredictable political environ-
ment, Chinese and foreign sociologists pressed
ahead with a wide-ranging variety of research ac-
tivities during the 1990s. The success of this effort
is a testament to the increasingly robust ties link-
ing Chinese and foreign sociologists. During the
1980s large numbers of aspiring young Chinese
sociologists were sent abroad for doctoral train-
ing, primarily to the United States. By the latter
part of that decade and into the 1990s, a majority
of the Western sociology doctoral theses dealing
with China were being produced by students from
China. After the 1989 Tiananmen massacre most
of these newly minted specialists on Chinese socie-
ty did not return to China, but instead embarked
on research careers in the West. However, mindful
of the desirability of leaving the door open for
their eventual return, China did not treat this