The authors of this text believe that ''areas'' as assemblages of social processes requiring distinct, culture-bound explanations cannot be replaced with global theories, but that the meaning of ''the area'' can be different depending on the question one studies. The study of China and Chinese, in particular, is a good arena to challenge the disciplinary and geographic boundaries of conventional area studies for several reasons. Frist, because of the wealth of simultaneous processes of rapid political, social, and discursive change in contemporary Chinese society; second, because of the problematic relationship between state, territory, nation, and ethnicity in China; third, because China studies, perhaps more than any other area studies at the moment, is a highly competitive political and academic industry whose internal working must be critically examined. In addition, the subject of China has become one of the primary loci of contesting the meanings of globalization and the universality versus relativity of ''values'' and modernity.

Pal Nyiri is director of the Applied Anthropology Programme at Macquarie University, Australia.

Joana Breidenbach is an anthropologist and journalist based in Berlin.