Err neg when it comes to the evaluation of evidence---academia is inherently Eurocentric.

As a subset of the cultural domain, global privilege in the academic field deserves a separate mention. Bob Pease’s work criticises North American scholars in the field of privilege studies for not naming and interrogating their own privilege emanating ‘from living in one of the most powerful, developed and affluent countries in the world’ (2010, p. 40). For instance, English being the hegemonic language in academia is a form of privilege that bestows advantages upon the scholars from some countries (and, therefore, their viewpoints) simply by virtue of birth, while simultaneously limiting the visibility and opportunities of non-English speakers. Furthermore, individuals born into financially privileged environments have the opportunity to receive English training or attend schools considered more prestigious. This implies that the bulk of academic publications come from comparatively privileged groups, shaping knowledge production with a bias from its inception (see Nair, 2022, pp. 83–96; Pease, 2010, pp. 51, 58–59).

Research has shown that the impact of privilege in academic inquiry is apparent in both the researcher’s ‘assumptions and narratives’ used to interpret their field experiences, as well as in the relationship established between the researcher and their object of study (McCorkel & Myers, 2003). Pease (2010, p. 43) similarly argues that ‘western social sciences are so embedded within Eurocentric assumptions that most social scientists are unaware of their European bias’. Consequently, the deeply ingrained theses of the dominant groups within the academia lead many scholars to aprioristically neglect and dismiss the arguments of the ‘Other’. The tendency towards biased judgements can be particularly damaging when examining topics that touch upon the researcher’s own privileges, and where the researcher may have a vested interest in obtaining a particular outcome (McCorkel & Myers, 2003, p. 226). As a way of illustration, a study by Hermann Kurthen (2020, p. 1) demonstrated that no matter the ideological leaning of the 37 US foreign policy experts he interviewed, all of them coincided with the imperative of ‘safeguarding US global leadership, maintaining alliances, securing US prosperity, orienting at values, and believing in a mission’.

In this regard, Chengxin Pan (2004) has criticised ‘China scholars’ in the ‘West’ and their supposed neutrality in studying the country, as well as their dichotomous normative assumptions about China and the United States. For Jon Solomon (2023), the field of area studies, created at US universities during a specific historical context of ideological struggle (the ‘Cold War’), has participated in the geopolitical tactics and strategies of the United States in its quest for unipolarity and global hegemony, establishing the methodologies, protocols, language, structures and expectations that practitioners in the field adhere to in their pursuit of validation from their peers.

The academic system, the experts and the knowledge are all imbued by the partisan worldview of the dominant group, which in turn grants it both a privileged position and legitimacy. Also, the institutions of education in countries of the ‘Global South’ have largely originated with the support of universities in the ‘Global North’ or experts educated in them. Accordingly, even Chinese scholars educated in US universities (or Chinese universities under Western models of knowledge) can come to justify the hegemony of the ‘Global North’ and interiorise the position of subordination of China as normal.

In this context, it is often ignored how scholars that go against the hegemonic understanding of China encounter barriers and pressure in the ‘Global North’. First, in the ‘New Cold War’ environment of hostility towards China, it becomes possible that scholars showing equidistance or defending certain Chinese perspectives become stigmatised by peers as siding with the ‘enemy’, in a logic that curtails pluralism and induces self-censorship. A second point is that scholars who challenge the prevailing view of the ‘China threat’ may encounter unfair obstacles in getting their work published, not necessarily because of lack of merit but rather because their arguments contradict the entrenched biases of editors and reviewers. The academic privilege of the ‘Global North’, thus, contributes to hampering the decolonisation of knowledge, normalising existing relations of domination/subordination and legitimising the ‘China threat’ rhetoric through scholarly work.