Bending and Fitting: Disciplinarized Institutionalization of Modern Science in China during the ‘Treaty Century’

This article investigates how Western science established itself through disciplinarized institutionalization in China as the country entered the modern era, delineating China’s science and technology (S&T) enterprises evolving within the social settings primarily decided by Confucianism doctrines including Scholar-bureaucrat virtue. Although the perspective of this study is mainly historical, I also adopt a sociological approach to scientific knowledge production in order to argue that, the socialization of Western science during the ‘Treaty Century’ (1842–1943) has shaped and channeled the growth of modern S&T as well as its governance in contemporary China in a normative manner. It is this sociological interpretation of the history of modern science in China that sheds new light on our understanding of scientific knowledge as a component element of belief system that crosses countries, social structures, and civilizations. The main findings also include the premises on which the S&T governance issues are explored in China’s case, in particular, the increased social mobility at the intrusion of the Western.