Key facts
- The school covers more than 10 ancient writing systems, including oracle bone inscriptions, bamboo and silk manuscripts and classical studies.
- The National Alliance for Rare and Endangered Disciplines groups more than 80 universities, research institutes and cultural and museum organizations.
- The school assembled a teaching and research team of more than 140 scholars, including eight members of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences academic divisions.
- Of roughly 4,000 distinct oracle bone characters identified, fewer than half have been deciphered, Xinhua reported.
- The school introduced a dual-supervisor system and an integrated undergraduate, master's and doctoral training program.
- Zhao Rui, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the school and alliance would serve tracing the origins of civilization and cultural security.
China inaugurated a school of rare and endangered academic disciplines at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing on November 6, the university's first such school, alongside a national alliance of more than 80 universities, research institutes and cultural and museum organizations.
The school focuses on more than 10 ancient writing systems, including oracle bone inscriptions, bamboo and silk manuscripts, classical studies and ancient scripts used by ethnic groups in northern and southwestern China. It has set up a digital research laboratory, launched an academic journal and introduced a specialized undergraduate program within an integrated undergraduate, master's and doctoral training system.
Xinhua reported that the school assembled a teaching and research team of more than 140 scholars, including eight members of the academic divisions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and more than 30 distinguished professors and nationally recognized academic specialists. It will use a dual-supervisor system pairing a principal academic mentor with a supervisor from another discipline.
Zhao Rui, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said at the inauguration that the school and alliance would help advance research in service of tracing the origins of civilization, border governance, cultural security and ethnic affairs. "We should always keep the country's vital interests in mind," Zhao said.