CRG Coverage of Hot Topics in Humanities

In November 2020, the Ministry of Education issued a Declaration on the Construction of New Liberal Arts. The intention for New Liberal Arts (新文科) is to expand China’s soft power through carefully constructed teaching of philosophy and social sciences. There are over 8,500 publications in CRG’s databases on New Liberal Arts, almost all of which have been published since 2019. For scholars of China’s soft power, historiography, and cultural identity, it is essential that researchers directly access Chinese publications in a timely and comprehensive way. Researchers cannot wait for works to be imported, translated, and distributed on pre-existing North American platforms. They need a solution like CRG.

There are over 53,000 articles on involution (內卷) in CRG’s databases. These include articles in the disciplines of journalism, sociology, and agriculture. While the term involution has its roots in agriculture, scholars have creatively applied it to societies, especially China’s, to describe that the increase in labor has not led to an increase in output and innovation. In May 2021, The New Yorker published “China’s ‘Involuted’ Generation,” describing how the combination of China’s competition and its political forces have created a unique form of entrapment.

In CRG’s databases, there are over 23,000 journal articles on the term National Learning (国学), a buzzword in Chinese culture studies with numerous spinoffs. For example, a May 2022 article in Academic Research addresses the rise of both the term National Learning as well as the even more politicized term National Essence (国粹). Together these concepts present an interesting area of study for humanities researchers of identity, culture, and political groups.

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