Concepts of Politics and Politics of Concepts: Translating Political Terminologies during China’s Transition to Modernity

This paper delves into the complex interplay between translation, political ideas, and the sociopolitical transformations of late imperial and early Republican China (1840–1937), a period deeply influenced by imperialism, colonial pressures, and internal upheaval. It focuses on the translation of Western political concepts into Chinese, a critical process through which new terminologies—such as “nation,” “revolution,” and “sovereignty”—were introduced, contested, and gradually institutionalized within China's emerging political landscape.

Drawing on over 50,000 newspaper and book pages, the study traces five key strategies of translation used to accommodate these foreign concepts and reveals how the usage frequency of different Chinese translations for the same Western political term changed. Furthermore, the paper uses computational word embeddings alongside historical analysis to explain how the meanings of these political terms evolved and how these processes were influenced by elites and key events. It demonstrates how the translation and interpretation of foreign political concepts became both a battleground for intellectual and political contestation and a tool for shaping China's modernization trajectory amidst foreign imperial domination and internal reforms.

By placing translation at the center of China’s transition from empire to nation-state, this study emphasizes the colonial and post-imperial shadows that shaped China’s political evolution. It addresses the session’s key questions, examining how colonialism and imperialism left a lasting imprint on China’s sociopolitical discourse and structures. Furthermore, it reflects on how these processes diverged from Western approaches, contributing to a uniquely East Asian narrative of modernity shaped by the dual forces of oppression and emancipation. The paper offers new insights into the broader genealogies of political thought across East Asia, contributing to a more inclusive global framework for understanding the power of concepts in public discourse and social scientific research in non-Western contexts.