Early modern era The earliest Westerners known to have studied Chinese in significant numbers were 16th-century Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian missionaries. All were either
Jesuits or
Dominicans seeking to spread
Catholic Christianity to the Chinese people. An early Spanish Dominican mission in
Manila operated a printing press; between 1593 and 1607, they produced four works on Catholic doctrine for the Chinese immigrant community, three in
Literary Chinese and one in a mixture of Literary Chinese and vernacular
Hokkien. Dominican accomplishments among the Chinese diaspora pale in comparison to the success of the Jesuits in mainland China, led by the renowned pioneer
Matteo Ricci. Ricci arrived in
Guangzhou in 1583, and would spend the rest of his life in China. Unlike most of his predecessors and contemporaries, Ricci did not view the Chinese firstly as pagans or idolators, but as "like-minded literati approachable on the level of learning". Like Chinese literati, he studied the Confucian classics in order to present Catholic doctrine and European learning to the Chinese using their own terms.
18th century During the
Age of Enlightenment, sinologists started to introduce Chinese philosophy, ethics, legal system, and aesthetics into the West. Though often unscientific and incomplete, their works inspired the development of
chinoiserie and a series of debates comparing Chinese and Western cultures. At that time, sinologists often described China as an enlightened kingdom, comparing it to Europe, which had just emerged from the
Dark Ages. Among the European literati interested in China was
Voltaire, who wrote the play ''
L'orphelin de la Chine inspired by The Orphan of Zhao, Leibniz who penned his famous '' (News from China) and
Giambattista Vico. Because Chinese texts did not have any major connections to most important European topics (such as the Bible), they were scarcely studied by European universities until around 1860. An exception to this was France, where Chinese studies were popularized owing to efforts from
Louis XIV. In 1711, he appointed a young Chinese man named
Arcadio Huang to catalog the royal collection of Chinese texts. Huang was assisted by
Étienne Fourmont, who published a grammar of Chinese in 1742. In 1732,
Matteo Ripa, a missionary of the
Neapolitan "Sacred Congregation" () founded the "Chinese Institute" in Naples—the first school of sinology on the European continent, and sanctioned by
Pope Clement XII. The institute was first nucleus of what would become today's . Ripa had worked as a painter and copper-engraver in the court of the
Kangxi Emperor between 1711 and 1723, and returned to Naples with four young Chinese Christians, who all taught their native language and formed the institute to teach Chinese to missionaries en route to China.
19th century In 1814, a chair of
Chinese and
Manchu was founded at .
Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, who
taught himself Chinese, filled the position, becoming the first professor of Chinese in Europe. By then the first Russian sinologist,
Nikita Bichurin, had been living in
Beijing for ten years. Abel-Rémusat's counterparts in
England and
Germany were
Samuel Kidd (1797–1843) and Wilhelm Schott (1807–1889) respectively, though the first important secular sinologists in these two countries were
James Legge and
Hans Georg Conon von der Gabelentz. In 1878, a professorship of Far Eastern languages, the first of its kind in the German-speaking world, was created at the
University of Leipzig with von der Gabelentz taking the position. Scholars like Legge often relied on the work of ethnic Chinese scholars such as
Wang Tao.
Stanislas Julien served as the chair of Chinese at the for over 40 years, starting his studies with Rémusat and succeeding him in 1833. He was notable for his translations not only of classical texts but also works of vernacular literature, and for his knowledge of Manchu.
Édouard Chavannes succeeded to the position after the death of
Marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys in 1893. Chavannes pursued broad interests in history as well as language. The image of China as an essentially Confucian society conveyed by Jesuit scholars dominated Western thought in these times. While some in Europe learned to speak Chinese, most studied written classical Chinese. These scholars were in what is called the "commentarial tradition" through critical annotated translation. This emphasis on translating classical texts inhibited the use of social science methodology or comparing these texts of other traditions. One scholar described this type of sinology as "philological hairsplitting" preoccupied with marginal or curious aspects. Secular scholars gradually came to outnumber missionaries, and in the 20th century sinology slowly gained a substantial presence in Western universities.
20th and 21st centuries The Paris-based type of sinology dominated learning about China until the Second World War even outside France.
Paul Pelliot,
Henri Maspero, and
Marcel Granet both published basic studies and trained students. Pelliot's knowledge of the relevant languages, especially those of Central Asia, and control of bibliography in those languages, gave him the power to write on a range of topics and to criticize in damning detail the mistakes of other scholars. Maspero expanded the scope of sinology from Confucianism to include Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religion, as well as art, mythology, and the history of science. The contribution of Granet was to apply the concepts of
Emile Durkheim, a pioneer sociologist, to the society of ancient China, especially the family and ritual. The Russian school of sinology was focused mainly on learning classical Chinese texts. For example, the contribution of the Russian sinologist
Julian Shchutsky was especially valuable. The best full translation of the
I Ching (
Book of Changes) was made by him in 1937. Later his translation was translated in English and other European languages. After the
proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, China studies developed along diverging lines. The rise of
Area studies, the role of
China watchers, and the growth of university graduate programs has changed the role of sinology. Funding for Chinese and Taiwanese studies comes from a variety of sources; one prominent source is the
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. The Area studies approach, especially in the United States, challenged the dominance of classical sinology. Scholars such as
John King Fairbank promoted the "study of China within a discipline," an approach which downplayed the role of philological sinology and focused on issues in history and the social sciences. One of the earliest American scholars of
Cold War China and Sino-American relations was Chinese-American
Tang Tsou of the
University of Chicago. Tsou emphasized the importance of academic objectivity in general and in sinology in particular, stressing that intellectual and academic exchange between China and the West was the only way for both parties to come to a greater understanding of one another. In 1964 an exchange in the pages of the
Journal of Asian Studies debated the continued relevance of sinology. The anthropologist
G. William Skinner called for the social sciences to make more use of China, but wrote "In recent years the cry has gone up: Sinology is dead; long live Chinese studies!" and concluded that "Sinology, a discipline unto itself, is being replaced by Chinese studies, a multidisciplinary endeavour with specific research objectives." During the
Cold War, China Watchers centered in
Hong Kong, especially American government officials or journalists. Mutual distrust between the United States and China and the prohibition of travel between the countries meant they did not have access to press briefings or interviews. They therefore adopted techniques from
Kremlinology, such as the close parsing of official announcements for hidden meanings, movements of officials reported in newspapers, and analysis of photographs of public appearances. But in the years since the opening of China, China watchers can live in China and take advantage of normal sources of information. Towards the end of the century, many of those studying China professionally called for an end to the split between sinology and the disciplines. The Australian scholar
Geremie Barmé, for instance, suggests a "New Sinology", one which "emphasizes strong scholastic underpinnings in both the classical and modern Chinese language and studies, at the same time as encouraging an ecumenical attitude in relation to a rich variety of approaches and disciplines, whether they be mainly empirical or more theoretically inflected." In Germany, with long-established traditions of "Sinologie" (Sinology), fierce debates have unfolded in recent years over whether Sinologists should condone China's atrocities against the
Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and other human rights abuses. Aspects of earlier phases of these debates were summarized in 2018 by Didi Kirsten Tatlow. In 2023, an op-ed in the
Neue Zürcher Zeitung by Sinologists
Thomas Heberer and
Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer, favoring China's policies in Xinjiang, sparked more debate, including fellow Sinologist Kai Vogelsang's response that German Sinology was now "bankrupt". The debates led to the German China Studies association (the Deutsche Vereinigung für Chinastudien) issuing a warning to its members that “Representatives of sinology have a very special responsibility to live up to their public role by guarding against suspicions of appropriation.” Still, Schmidt-Glintzer (one of the authors that praised Beijing's policies) later accepted an award from the Chinese state -- and was roundly criticized for it by another fellow Sinologist, Björn Alpermann (author of a book on the Uyghurs, Xinjiang: China und die Uiguren). == Universities with sinology master programmes ==