Chinese scholar Dr. Tu Huazhong gave a presentation titled ‘Pakistan Studies in China: Reviews and Prospects’ in an in-house session at IPS on April 23, 2015.
He is a research assistant at the Institute of South Asian Studies, Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, Kunming and a joint PhD candidate at the Department of International Relations, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China and School of Social Sciences and Humanities, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad.
Presenting statistics on his topic, Tu opined that while there has been an air of amity and cooperation between the two countries for over six decades, there was a large vacuum in the academic arena to know each other. He also deliberated upon various ways to increase cognizance at the grass-root level between Pakistan and China to consolidate their relations further.
The speaker pointed that there were about six Pakistan Study Centers in different universities of China while the number of scholars as subject specialists on Pakistan was not too great either. One of the hurdles in doing the research work on Pakistan in China, according to the speaker, was lesser opportunities for Chinese scholars to interact with Pakistani institutions.
The speaker however presented a much encouraging picture of Pakistan’s image in Chinese media, according to which the country was seen positively about 95 per cent of the times it was discussed.
DG-IPS Khalid Rahman appreciated the findings of Tu’s research and deemed warm relations between the two countries as one of the reasons for Chinese researchers focusing less on Pakistan and more on rather divergent countries. He also emphasized on the need of increased understanding about Pakistan in China and vice versa.
