Yesterday’s post comparing the maps of
Patrick Chovanec and William Skinner has garnered many responses, not the least of which from Patrick Chovanec himself. We have been exchanging emails this morning, and a brief summary of our discussion can be found below.
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Dear Jeremiah,
It was great to talk with you earlier today concerning the points you raise about my article “The Nine Nations of China.”
Readers of your blog may be interested in a post I made on my own blog “Intellectual Antecedents” that addresses some of these issues. The “Nine Nations” framework is not based upon Skinner’s work, it is the result of many years of independent research and analysis. The substance — including the regional descriptions — are my own and original. But you are absolutely right to call attention to the fact that there have been many preceding scholars – Chinese and Western — who have studied the question of China’s regional make-up, and that my own conclusions in some ways match and validate their own. I actually noted this in my original submission to The Atlantic, but the final product was cut to about half its original size, and it was all I could do to insist that they reinsert my reference to Joel Garreau (as I had taken my title from the title of his book, it would have been quite rude to omit him!).
Had I been writing an academic paper, I would have of course meticulously listed all the sources who had contributed their thoughts on this subject and described in detail how I agreed and disagreed with each one. But the purpose of this article was really to introduce an important way of thinking about China into the popular discussion of businesspeople and policy-makers, where it had been absent. I hope people whose interest has been piqued by my article will look into the work of Skinner and others, and compare and contrast their conclusions with my own.
In my blog post, I also address the concerns you raise about adopting China’s existing provinces boundaries as the basis for my framework. This was not an oversight, but an intentional decision on my part. The reason is, I’m not a career academic by background, I’m a business practitioner, and I developed my framework in the hope that it could be a practical tool for people like me in analyzing demographic trends and market data from China. Most of the data that is available out there is broken down by province. Yes, it is true that it lacks some of the intellectual sophistication and nuance that an anthropologist, like Skinner, could produce from his own dedicated research. But it’s my belief that it makes up for that in functionality and ease of use.
Patrick Chovanec
Tsinghua University
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Dear Patrick,
First of all, I am not accusing you of plagiarism. As one of my history students recently told me regarding a section of his paper and a certain article on Wikipedia, “similar is not the same.” Fair enough, and I’m willing to take you at your word regarding the originality of your article.
As I wrote above, I liked the intent behind the map and I thought that the overall argument and perspective were very valuable ones. It is unfortunate that even now the “China as Monolith” trope still seems to linger in the global consciousness regarding things Chinese. Hopefully, future articles can put a dent into that mythology.
I also noticed that on several other blogs there were questions about how the map was drawn and how those distinctions were made. I thought it would be useful for people to know that maps like this one are in fact part of an ongoing academic conversation regarding spatial analysis of China, and in particular as one of the many legacies of Professor Skinner.
That said, your editors did you a disservice by not allowing you to explain how your map fit with the earlier research and “intellectual antecedents” cited afterward on your blog. This might have helped clarify why you chose to draw the lines the way y0u did, that they were not arbitrary (or any more arbitrary than the lines on any map), but were instead based upon your experience and data, as well as being supported by earlier research done by scholars whose findings were similar.
The work of Professor Skinner and others helped several generations of China scholars understand the rich and complex mosaic of historical and contemporary China. As academics, we should work to make the ideas of researchers such as Professor Skinner, wonkish as he could be at times, accessible to a wider audience.
Jeremiah
