China sets up first school to research rare and endangered fields

The School of Rare and Endangered Disciplines, the first such school at a Chinese university, was established on Friday at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. It will focus on distinctive research areas such as ancient ethnic scripts, oracle bone studies, bamboo and silk manuscript studies, and classical studies.

The school has built a distinctive disciplinary system for rare and endangered fields, covering more than 10 ancient ethnic scripts, including Turkic, Tangut, Khitan, Jurchen, Manchu, and Tibetan. It has also set up teaching and research departments for oracle bone and bamboo and silk manuscript studies, ancient scripts of northern ethnic groups, ancient scripts of southwestern ethnic groups, and Chinese and Western classical studies.

Together, these provide a complete academic support platform for deciphering ancient scripts, collating rare documents, and conducting comparative research on multiple civilizations.

In addition, initiated by the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, more than 80 universities, research institutions and cultural and museum organizations jointly launched the National Alliance for Rare and Endangered Disciplines on Friday.

The alliance currently comprises prestigious universities, including Tsinghua University, Renmin University of China, Beijing Normal University and Fudan University; research institutes, such as the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences; and cultural and museum institutions, including the First Historical Archives of China.

Zhao Rui, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said at the inauguration ceremony that these measures are intended to advance research in rare and endangered disciplines in service of tracing the origins of civilization, border governance, cultural security, and the overall work on ethnic affairs.

"We should always keep the country's vital interests in mind, closely align them with major national strategic needs, and dig deep into the historical memories and civilizational genes contained in rare and endangered disciplines," he said.

Guillaume Jacques, senior researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, said via video at the inauguration ceremony that ancient script research is of great significance to historiography, linguistics and archaeology. The decipherment and revision of ancient scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, cuneiform and Maya hieroglyphs have corrected many established prejudices in Western academic circles.

He called on academia to value, support and nurture young scholars in ancient philology and endangered linguistics, so as to pass down academic heritage and sustain the inheritance of these rare disciplines.

This first School of Rare and Endangered Disciplines has many highlights in its talent training model: it operates a dual-supervisor system that pairs chief supervisors with interdisciplinary supervisors and builds an integrated undergraduate-master's-doctoral training system. Guided by major national-level research tasks, the school will incorporate document collation and academic practical training into every stage of the training process and turn high-quality research resources into resources for educating students.

Xu Jincheng, secretary of the Party Committee of the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the university has always placed the development of rare and endangered disciplines in a strategically foundational position — one tied to the continuation of Chinese civilization, the long-term stability and security of the country, and the building of an independent knowledge system.