Participants of Fudan-UC Center's annual Social Sciences & China Studies Young Scholar's Conference listen to a seminar. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Managing Associate Director Xian Xu also welcomed the conference visitors. He described how the Fudan-UC Center was established to play a vital role in Fudan University's international outreach and in China-US engagement. He encouraged everyone to stay engaged both through the center and through other Fudan sponsored events, including the upcoming Shanghai Forum to be held at Fudan University's main campus.

Throughout the course of two days, the 14 up-and-coming China Studies scholars presented their research and received feedback from their peers and professors. Work reviewed pushed the edges of social science, from mapping the spectrum of liberal-conservative political preferences within Chinese society, calculating the number of interactions with state owned news sources on social media, to analyzing cultural factors that could explain political trust. Some research, such as a study of urban Chinese volunteers through interviews, are very rooted in the context of China, others like using Gaussian kernels and network analysis to model political relationships, could be utilized in understanding the world as a whole. "China studies is entering a new phase," Lei Guang said. "Data is allowing China Studies to be a part of the greater social science field rather than be confined to area studies where it had been isolated before."

Professors from UC San Diego, including Barry Naughton, Victor Shih, Molly Roberts, Jia Ruixue, and Stephen Haggard, gave detailed feedback. Faculty commended the new ideas being explored, but also suggested new ways to approach research questions and recommended resources. Students welcomed the feedback and discussed how they would use the comments to improve their research in the future. After the professors' comments, the floor opened up for conversation and feedback from the scholars themselves. Coming from various social sciences and fields and focuses, the scholars were able to view their peers' research with fresh eyes.

Lei Guang encouraged the scholars to return to next year's conference, or to come visit UC San Diego as a guest lecturer for the Fudan-UC Center or the 21st Century China Program. He invited everyone to continue participating in the ongoing discussion on US-China relations and China studies.