Spaces of Circulation: Knowledge Production Between China and the West

Due to a combination of academic, geopolitical, and economic factors, research into the production of new knowledge in and about China has significantly accelerated around the verge of the twenty-first century. Most studies on the period of the early Christian mission in China were based on the assumption that it were the very same actors – mainly missionaries and a very limited number of Chinese scholar-officials – who played an important role for the exchange in both directions. However, our understanding of the developments since the late nineteenth century until about the middle of the twentieth century has remained limited and highly fragmented. The articles in this special issue show that botanists, translators, logicians, linguists, writers, engineers, biologists, Communist Party members, diplomats, philologists, scientists, customs officers, book printers, and sinologists all shaped and participated in spaces of circulation between Europe and China.