Chinese academic courses designed to deepen understanding of different countries or regions face a challenge in better informing policy and moving beyond frameworks developed in the West, a conference in Beijing has heard.

Speakers said that as the country’s international engagement deepened, it needed a better understanding of the nations it engaged with, including their political systems, histories and strategic priorities.

The discipline – known in China as “area studies” – draws on disciplines including history, politics, economics and sociology to examine individual countries and regions.

It has grown in importance in recent years as China seeks to deepen its international engagement and develop a more comprehensive understanding of global affairs.

The discipline was driven by national strategic needs and structural changes in China’s relations with the world, Han Zhibin, vice-president of Northwest University, said at Friday’s event in Beijing.

He said the discipline was extremely popular, adding that “one or two area and country studies programmes are emerging nationwide every day, and each university can list seven or eight supporting disciplines in its official documents”.

“Area studies are fundamentally intended to serve the needs of the country, but translating academic research into policy is difficult. That is a new challenge,” he said.

Researchers still faced difficulties integrating different disciplines, while sustained fieldwork in the countries being studied remained insufficient, Han said. The field needed to focus more on problem-driven research and in-country investigations, and strengthen links between academic work and policy needs, he added.

Di Dongsheng, dean of the School of Global and Area Studies at Renmin University, said China needed to develop its own framework for understanding the world as its global footprint expanded.

In the past, China’s integration into global markets relied heavily on Western-led structures, meaning it had less need to independently study different regions, Di said.

“Our understanding of the world was primarily anchored in studying the United States, followed by in-depth research into Europe and Japan,” he said.

“China had little need to invest heavily in understanding other regions independently because we were essentially navigating the world on someone else’s ship – piggybacking on the global markets built by the West.”“That is no longer viable. Today, it is China’s own technology, standards and capital that are expanding across the globe,” he said.

The shift also comes as the Global South seeks a greater role in shaping international debates.

Liu Qing, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, a think tank affiliated with the foreign ministry, said international research was moving beyond its traditional focus on geopolitics and economics as multiple crises increasingly overlapped and perspectives from the Global South gained prominence.

“The Global South represents more than just an emerging geopolitical force – it marks the rise of its own intellectual power and ideas,” Liu said. Some speakers at the forum said it was necessary to move beyond Western analytical frameworks.

Yang Jiemian, a senior research fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said: “China needs to escape the trap of Western-centrism.”“When Western critics claim that a rising power is bound to seek hegemony, our response is often just to insist that we will not,” Yang said.

“In reality, that is still playing defence – trapped in a cycle of trying to prove our innocence.”

“In area studies, we cannot remain passive consumers of existing knowledge. We must become not only participants but leaders in shaping the narrative.”