A proper analysis of China’s future must also be shaped by our understanding of the wider domestic drivers of continuity and change. The Center for China Analysis’ (CCA) Society, Culture, Public Health, and Education pillar is structured through distinct projects that engage fellows in the broader study of contemporary China and help evaluate and improve the study of Sinology. Under the constraints of today’s great power competition, closed borders, and increasing geopolitical hostilities, it is easy for the human dimension of the study of China to become obscured or lost within the dominant geopolitical and strategic discourse.

This is both dangerous and largely uncontested. The CCA aims to provide a platform that reckons with the real lives and minds of ordinary people living and working across China, struggling with the day-to-day challenges of life. Through quantitative and qualitative research, disseminated in the form of commentaries, papers, and lectures, fellows seek to present the multiple challenges and some of the continuing joys of living in China today, through the proper investigation of underlying social, cultural, and ideational trends.