In an era defined by deepening geopolitical fractures and a prevailing narrative of inevitable conflict, the field of China Studies finds itself at a crossroads. Recently, we had the privilege of moderating a candid and exciting dialogue with Michael Szonyi, a Canadian Rhodes Scholar, Frank Wen-Hsiung Wu Memorial Professor of Chinese History, and former Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.
The conversation was moderated by Xiaorui Zhou, a Rhodes scholar from China and a PhD candidate in History at Harvard University. The dialogue addressed urgent questions: how does the scholarly community navigate current geopolitical uncertainties, and how do we address the existential and methodological questions of the field?
What emerged was not a series of policy prescriptions, but a reflective examination of Professor Szonyi’s academic upbringing and what it means to study China in the Anglophone world when the very act of doing so has become politically charged. For Szonyi, the separation from China during the pandemic marked the longest absence from the country of his adult life. His return in 2023 was not merely a resumption of professional duties but a profound personal renewal. “I really feel reinvigorated as a scholar,” Szonyi remarked, describing the trip as “an incredibly successful year on virtually every front.” Despite the discouraging political climate between Washington and Beijing, Szonyi found that the human connections beneath the surface of state-level tensions remained vital, noting that “ordinary China scholars and the ordinary American people are deeply committed to engagement.”
The Resilience of the Rural
Szonyi, having first arrived in China in 1991 as a doctoral student, fondly remembered himself as a historian “growing up together with the Reform and Open Up” (“我和改革开放长大了”). A central theme of Szonyi’s reflections was the surprising persistence of traditional rural culture. He recalled that in the 1990s, the academic consensus — echoing scholars like David Holm — was that China’s rapid modernization meant that society was simultaneously experiencing a “cultural revival” and a “cultural extinction episode.” Scholars feared that the latter would mean the former would be short-lived. Yet, Szonyi’s recent fieldwork in Fujian and extensive travels across China revealed just the opposite: a robust revival of lineage networks, religious rituals, and local customs.
He noted the adaptability of these traditions, offering a vivid example of spirit mediums in rural Fujian. These traditional healers now must surrender their cell phones before entering temples for training—not because of ancient dogma, but because they spend their working lives in the modern factories of Dongguan and Shenzhen and need to disconnect. Nevertheless, Szonyi cautioned against seeing these traditions as static. He noted that while “cultural extinction” didn’t happen, the revival is not evenly distributed, often depending on state policy and local wealth.
In addition, drawing from a large reservoir of local documents from the fourteenth to the twentieth century, Szonyi vigorously challenged the stereotype of rural China as stagnant or unsophisticated. Drawing on his research in Yongtai, he highlighted the historical economic ingenuity of ordinary villagers. He described land deeds and contracts from the mid-Qing dynasty that showed peasants using manure as collateral for loans—a practice he termed the “securitization” of assets. He pushed for a robust reconsideration of skills, techniques, and local organizations. This historical reality, he argued, reframes the story of China’s modernization.
“One of the phrases that I really object to hearing is the idea that China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty,” Szonyi stated passionately. “800 million people lifted themselves out of poverty, and they lifted themselves out of poverty with their skills and their abilities and their hard work.”
The Human Cost of Over-Generalization
Throughout the discussion, Szonyi cautioned against the intellectual danger of “reducing complexity,” a tendency he observes in both social sciences and popular discourse. He urged the audience to look past broad over-generalizations to see the specific, often tragic, human realities they obscure. “Exoticizing and foreignizing the Chinese people is also equally problematic,” he warned.
To illustrate this, he shared a heart-wrenching encounter with a Shidu (“失独”) couple in the countryside—elderly parents who had lost their only child. Living a life of extreme frugality, foraging for fuel and water to save every penny, they embodied a specific rural vulnerability. Szonyi shared that he was prompted by this lived experience to rethink the trope of the rural preference for sons as merely a product of “feudal backwardness.” When viewed through the lens of their vulnerability—where the loss of an only child or a son equates to the total loss of old-age security—such cultural preferences betray much deeper socio-economic roots and survival strategies.
Xiaorui intervened here with a striking literary parallel, citing the writer Eileen Chang. She noted that when Chang taught in the American Midwest in the 1950s, a student read her novel The Rice Sprout Song and asked in puzzlement, “Why were these people just like us?”
Szonyi seized on this anecdote, recounting a similar reaction when he lectured to Canadian civil servants and a general remarked, “I think what you’re saying is the Chinese are just like us.” This, Szonyi noted, is the historian’s delicate and most rewarding task: to illuminate the specific cultural trajectories that define China while dismantling the exoticism that renders its people as fundamentally “other.” He stressed the need to remember that “people are both the same and different,” and that scholarship must hold both truths simultaneously.
The Ethics of Fieldwork and Connection
As the conversation moved to the mechanics of research, Xiaorui asked a practical question: “How do you strike up these conversations?” She noted that while fieldwork sounds romantic, the actual approach can be daunting.
To that, Szonyi cheerfully replied with his “secret”: “Try to make friends with people.” Beneath what Szonyi called a deceptively “simple and shallow” approach lay a rigorous ethical reflexivity. He emphasized remaining aware of the power dynamics and differences in privilege between scholars like himself and the people he met on the street, as well as being conscious of the ethical consideration of not putting them at risk.
“I didn't go into this instrumentally,” Szonyi reflected, speaking of relationships that have spanned forty years. “I didn’t befriend the family in Luozhou... with the idea that 40 years later, I would still be learning about their lives.”
He described the “third person” phenomenon he often encountered in rural areas, where locals discussed him right in front of his face (“Oh, look, a laowai!”) until he broke the ice in Chinese. These interactions, he noted, were reciprocal exchanges. Even though Szonyi, like many North Americans, did not feel comfortable sharing his salary, it was often the third or fourth question from the people he interacted with—and answering it was part of the "reciprocity" of the conversation. He emphasized that for his specific type of history, “fieldwork literally creates the archive that I work with,” weaving oral histories and scattered documents into coherent narratives of the past.
Engagement in an Era of “Securitization”
The dialogue inevitably turned to the challenges of current US-China relations. Xiaorui brought up a question from the audience regarding the "militarization" of the relationship, a concept Peter Hessler had touched upon in a previous panel. Szonyi agreed but refined the terminology. He suggested that “securitization” better captures the current climate, where every aspect of engagement—from academic exchanges to trade—is viewed through the lens of national security risk.
To illustrate how drastically the atmosphere has changed, Szonyi shared a telling anecdote from his early days as a student in Fujian. He recalled being placed in the sidecar of a motorcycle during a funeral procession. His friends put him there explicitly because his presence as a foreigner would prevent the police from stopping the procession. “Now,” Szonyi noted, the dynamic is reversed; a foreigner’s presence draws scrutiny rather than deflecting it.
However, referencing the insights of his late colleague and mentor, the immense Sinologist Ezra Vogel, Szonyi argued that these challenges make engagement more, not less, important. He cited a sobering statistic from Ambassador Nicholas Burns: there are currently nearly 300,000 Chinese students in the United States, compared to only about 1,000 Americans studying in China. “This is not the time for us to know less, not more,” Szonyi insisted. Regardless of one’s political stance on the bilateral relationship, ignorance is a strategic liability.
He offered a strong call to action for young scholars: “Just go.” He urged them to contact their international offices and find ways to be present in China—and don’t wait. “You’re a better scholar if you talk to Chinese colleagues about your work,” he said, emphasizing that isolation only deepens the parochialism that hampers understanding on both sides of the Pacific.
The Historian vs. The Data Model
Finally, the conversation turned to methodology. Xiaorui asked about the trend of quantitative social science in China studies and how historians fit into this new landscape.
Szonyi critiqued the trend of using historical data without historical context, referencing recent works that make sweeping claims about Chinese history without engaging with the scholarship of historians. He warned against the allure of “cursory understanding,” livening the conversation with a witty quote from his former student, Lawrence Zhang: “Just because you see a number doesn't mean you should run a regression on it.”
Xiaorui then asked a difficult question: for those with a sound understanding of contemporary China but who hope for a deeper grasp of how China’s past connects to the present, what works would Szonyi consider essential starting points?
Szonyi narrowed it down to three distinct recommendations:
He also modestly mentioned his own forthcoming work, Village China, which will offer a new history of modern China from the vantage point of rural society.
For Szonyi, the path forward in bridging data and historical sensibility lies in an “information ecology”—understanding documents and data not as transparent facts, but as artifacts of complex social systems. He expressed excitement about the potential for interdisciplinary collaboration, envisioning future projects where historians might work with climate scientists or biologists to map the physical and environmental history of places like Yongtai.
Conclusion
In a conversation that traversed the securitization of manure to the securitization of nations, Michael Szonyi’s message remained one of pragmatic optimism. His insights were not derived from abstract theory but from decades of sustained academic, ethnographic, and human engagement. As he advised the younger scholars in the room:
“Start making the plan for that long-term engagement. Now, this is a moment where you can actually lay foundations that will bring you immense rewards over the course of your career.”