Answering Epochal Topics and Responding to Practical Requests— A Brief Review of the One-hundred Historical Development of Political Studies Discipline in China

Remaining true to innovation while seeking original mission, is the basic path for the PSD (political studies discipline) to develop in China. The evolution of the PSD in China has been fully studied from various dimensions such as discipline, paradigm and historical stages. The paper proposes that it is also an important dimension to review the development process of PSD by analyzing shifts of epochal topics and practical requests. Only by this way, it is much clearer to display the whole picture of discipline development: what have changed and what have not changed in the PSD. Since the 1920s, the PSD in China has experienced stages of modern state-building, communist revolution, socialist building, reform and opening-up and New Age of China development. In each stage, it set its own research topics while responding actively to political changes. Then it gradually forms the path of the PSD development in China and builds a knowledge system to answer Chinese issues and conduct international dialogues. The PSD should keep renewing itself by participating in the political development in China and seek its autonomy by contributing knowledge to the latter.