New Methods, Old Debates: The Contested Formation of Computational Social Science in China

This paper explores the development of computational social science (CSS) in China via the model of contested field formation. This model highlights that Chinese CSS emerges amid tensions between institutionalization-driven structural forces and entrenched epistemological traditions, defying both the Western diffusion and the top-down dominance models. The model highlights that three external structural pressures fuel CSS's expansion in Chinese universities: the state's New Liberal Arts (xinwenke) policy, a central-government’s higher education reform that pushes humanities and social sciences toward interdisciplinary, digital, and now AI+ transformation; a graduate labor market crisis that renders CSS training a career credential for humanities and social sciences students; and growing platform data and computational infrastructure enabling innovative research designs. These pressures face two internal constraints: a faculty shortage hindering effective New Liberal Arts implementation on the one hand and, on the other, the epistemological pushback from indigenization-oriented and autonomous-knowledge-system discussions that pivot on whether CSS can generate signature Chinese concepts or merely import universalist categories.