Chinese Studies – (M.Phil.)

The emergence of China as a major world power is, quite simply, inescapable and that fact will impact hugely on the UK for the foreseeable future. This impact will be also be felt in regions like the North West which have large Chinese communities, so understanding the issues surrounding the emergence of China will be important for economic, political, social and cultural development in the region and beyond. Manchester has the largest Chinese community outside London with more than 30,000 people of Chinese ethnicity living and working in the City. The University of Manchester itself attracts around 1,500 Chinese students each year.

The Centre for Chinese Studies (CCS) forms part of a consortium, the British Inter-University China Centre (BICC), jointly established with the Universities of Oxford and Bristol. Funded by a total of almost £5 million over five years, BICC aims to develop the UK's premier research and teaching facility on China. The research undertaken by CCS focuses on modern and contemporary China, particularly the second half of the 20th century, following the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. China is studied in the broad sense as transnational China, encompassing the whole of the Chinese speaking-world, which is centred around the mainland, but also includes Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau as well as the diasporic Chinese communities in Europe, Southeast Asia, North America and elsewhere.

China is researched, from a historical and comparative perspective, in the global context to understand how China and Chinese-speaking world influence and impact upon the global community, and vice versa. Current research undertaken by CCS Faculty members includes Sino-Western interactions, contemporary Chinese culture and society, identity formation and transformation, Chinese foreign policy and security, nationalism and transnationalism, diaspora, spatial, visual, and material culture of urban China, and economic transformation. On a theoretical level, research on China should inform social science theorisation on the one hand; and social science theories would help with the understanding of China and its development on the other hand. The efforts to study China in a firm social science/humanities grounding will be enhanced by the organizational setup of the CCS, which is supported by £900,000 of University Strategic Investment Fund money - as the first phase of a planned total investment of £2.5 million over the next few years - and brings together a range of experts from schools and faculties right across the University. The Centre has ten core academic staff and two researchers.