On August 26, 2026, Chinese Social Sciences Today published an article by Feng Shuai, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Center for Global AI Innovative Governance (CGAIG) and Deputy Director of the Institute for International Strategic and Security Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS). The article argues that artificial intelligence, with its broad adaptability and rapidly expanding applications across human society, is profoundly transforming the world and reshaping social science research, creating new opportunities for the development of area and country studies in China. The integration of AI into area and country studies is not only transforming research topics, methodologies, and research agendas but also driving innovation in disciplinary thinking and research paradigms. The article emphasizes the importance of combining traditional fieldwork with digital technologies, integrating dynamic data analysis with in-depth contextual knowledge, and strengthening interdisciplinary collaboration. AI is expected to usher in a new stage of area and country studies characterized by greater dynamism and forward-looking analytical capabilities.
Artificial intelligence is highly adaptable and is rapidly permeating nearly every aspect of human production and everyday life. It is profoundly transforming the world and reshaping numerous fields of social science research, accelerating humanity's transition into the AI era. Against this backdrop, area and country studies in China are encountering new opportunities for development. The integration of AI is not only bringing changes to research topics, methods, and agendas but also stimulating innovations in disciplinary thinking and research paradigms. With AI-enabled research capabilities, China's area and country studies are poised to enter a new stage characterized by greater dynamism and a stronger capacity for forward-looking analysis.
I. Artificial Intelligence Ushers in a New Stage of Area and Country Studies
A review of the historical development of area and country studies reveals that the discipline has always been closely connected to the needs of its time. Its research paradigms, intellectual traditions, and theoretical approaches bear the distinctive marks of different historical periods. In the twenty-first century, the evolution of area and country studies has coincided with a new wave of technological revolution driven by artificial intelligence, opening a new chapter in the transformation of disciplinary knowledge production.
The first major wave of expansion in area and country studies emerged during the Age of Exploration. European colonial powers increasingly sought to collect and study local knowledge about their colonies to facilitate colonial administration and reduce governance costs, laying the historical foundations of the discipline. Early area and country studies were predominantly shaped by the humanities, focusing on the languages, cultures, histories, and documentary traditions of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This period gave rise to a traditional research paradigm represented by what came to be known as “Oriental Studies”, marking an important formative stage in the discipline's development.
The second major wave of expansion occurred after the Second World War, when the center of disciplinary development shifted from Europe to the United States and the objectives of research underwent significant changes. To respond to the global challenges of the Cold War, American scholars increasingly approached area studies through the social sciences, focusing on contemporary political, economic, military, and social developments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These studies provided knowledge and analytical support for US global strategy. During this period, “area studies” gradually replaced the declining tradition of “Oriental Studies” as the dominant disciplinary paradigm. The new paradigm emphasized contemporary conditions and interdisciplinary perspectives, incorporating historical and cultural analysis to explain the strategic behavior of particular countries. It also moved away from the traditional tendency to treat non-Western countries primarily as the “Other”, introducing theoretical narratives centered on modernization and globalization. Although this approach produced important intellectual advances, it continued to lack perspectives grounded in the agency and experiences of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The need for new theories and research models consequently became increasingly apparent.
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, area and country studies have entered a third wave of development. As a representative emerging power, China has become a central force in advancing the institutional and intellectual development of the discipline during this period. This marks the first major attempt by a developing country to take a leading role in shaping the discipline. Guided by the vision of a community with a shared future for humanity, the objective is to develop an open, diverse, and mutually beneficial multidimensional theoretical framework, establish an inclusive knowledge system based on equality and mutual learning, and explore new approaches to global governance.
At the same time, artificial intelligence has achieved unprecedented technological breakthroughs, crossed the threshold of industrialization, and entered widespread commercial application. With its capabilities for autonomous learning and environmental adaptation, AI has become increasingly integrated into numerous aspects of human production and social life. Almost every discipline within the humanities and social sciences has undergone adjustments in response to these technological developments, and area and country studies are no exception. AI has introduced additional analytical perspectives and dimensions, enabled the incorporation of novel and significant research topics, and, more importantly, made technological innovation an integral component of emerging disciplinary paradigms.
II. Artificial Intelligence Drives Methodological Innovation in Area and Country Studies
The most immediate impact of advances in artificial intelligence is methodological innovation. As a new generation of digital research tools, AI provides researchers with unprecedented capabilities, enabling the production of richer and more diverse scholarly findings.
AI introduces new tools for information collection and extraction, transforming the ways research data are accumulated. Area and country studies rely on extensive information and empirical materials. Comprehensive literature reviews and long-term fieldwork have therefore remained defining features of the discipline. Improving the efficiency of information and data collection has consequently become essential to enhancing research productivity. AI-powered tools can now be widely applied to data collection, organization, and processing, substantially improving the efficiency of information gathering and knowledge accumulation. Large-scale data mining is a particularly important strength of AI. By combining data collection techniques such as web scraping and satellite remote sensing with analytical methods including machine learning, researchers can obtain multidimensional data in near real time. For example, natural language processing can be used to analyze news reports from a target country and rapidly identify emerging policy developments. Satellite image recognition can help monitor changes in infrastructure construction, while AI-powered data platforms can continuously collect multilingual texts and unstructured data from global news sources, academic reports, and social media. Semantic analysis techniques can then be employed to extract key information efficiently. The incorporation of AI therefore not only expands the scale of available research data but also facilitates a methodological transition from static description toward dynamic monitoring and analysis.
AI provides new theoretical and analytical tools, enabling researchers to explain regional developments from previously inaccessible perspectives. AI can support the development of new explanatory frameworks for area and country studies, particularly by integrating multidimensional data into more comprehensive analytical models. For instance, knowledge graphs can be used to establish topological connections among different fields of knowledge within a particular region, integrating disciplinary perspectives and identifying potential theoretical explanations for specific phenomena. Similarly, intelligent analytical tools can facilitate complex network analysis within a given region, offering more systematic representations of relationships such as trade interdependence among states and the reliability of political alliances. With AI-enabled analytical capabilities, researchers can incorporate a wider range of interconnected variables and explanatory dimensions. As a result, area and country studies are moving beyond purely data-driven approaches toward research increasingly supported by computational models.
AI introduces new methodological possibilities that advance collaborative innovation in area and country studies. AI technologies make it increasingly feasible to establish globally connected and collaborative research networks across the humanities and social sciences. AI-supported collaborative platforms enable scholars around the world to share research data, conduct collaborative annotation, and perform cross-validation. These capabilities help overcome the geographical and temporal limitations of conventional research practices, facilitating knowledge aggregation and the joint development of research databases and repositories. AI has thus opened an expanding methodological toolkit for area and country studies. With access to diverse algorithmic tools, researchers can collect and process information more efficiently, incorporate additional analytical dimensions, extend the boundaries of inquiry, and continuously update their methodological approaches. Taken together, these developments are reshaping the discipline as a whole.
III. Artificial Intelligence Expands the Research Agenda of Area and Country Studies
Beyond providing innovative methodological tools, artificial intelligence is also profoundly influencing the formation of research agendas in area and country studies. On the one hand, AI is increasingly affecting every region of the world, reshaping patterns of production and everyday life to varying degrees. This transformation requires researchers to devote greater attention to the relationship between technology and society. On the other hand, the expansion of methodological capabilities has created new opportunities to investigate topics that were previously difficult to examine systematically. As AI continues to expand its influence, the substantive focus of area and country studies is undergoing significant adjustment, while the discipline's research agenda is evolving in new directions.
AI-related development and policy issues are emerging as major research priorities in area and country studies. As AI technologies spread rapidly, national strategies for technological development, industrial policy, and AI governance are becoming increasingly important determinants of regional and national development. Consequently, the development of AI technologies and industries within particular countries and regions, together with the governance challenges they generate, has become a major focus of area and country studies worldwide. Prominent research topics include comparative industrial policies, comparative governance frameworks, differences in ethical perspectives, and strategic competition surrounding artificial intelligence. Questions concerning the development of global and regional AI industrial chains and value chains, as well as cross-border data flows, have also become central concerns in policy research. Indeed, a comprehensive understanding of AI policy requires the active involvement of area and country studies. Only by examining the interests, cultural contexts, and intellectual foundations of individual countries can researchers adequately explain their strategic choices concerning artificial intelligence. The growing prominence of technology–society relations is therefore one of the defining features of contemporary area and country studies.
AI-enabled methodologies are bringing previously underexplored topics into the mainstream of area and country studies. Innovations in research tools create important opportunities for innovation in research agendas, allowing scholars to extend both the depth and breadth of their investigations. In particular, topics requiring real-time monitoring and intensive data analysis are becoming increasingly prominent. For example, AI-enabled research has contributed to a growing body of scholarship examining the evolution of domestic public opinion in particular countries through large-scale data analysis. Such studies frequently rely on social media data. AI tools can continuously monitor major social media platforms within a country and automatically accumulate data in research databases. These capabilities support both timely policy analysis and longitudinal research into changes in public opinion. Similarly, remote sensing technologies enable researchers to monitor specific geographical targets and conduct highly timely studies of environmental change, deforestation, and the prospects for developing shipping routes. Such research can provide stronger empirical support for policy analysis and decision-making.
AI creates new opportunities for precise scenario simulation, opening additional directions for area and country studies. Some researchers at the forefront of the discipline are already employing AI technologies to develop digital twins and simulate social conditions within specific regional settings. These approaches are increasingly applied to topics such as election forecasting, strategic interactions over critical policy issues, and evaluations of policy outcomes. With advances in AI, simulation processes are becoming more detailed, while their capacity to reproduce complex real-world conditions is improving. These methods can not only support preparations for fieldwork but also provide valuable analytical input for strategic decision-making. As AI technologies continue to develop, simulation-based research is expected to occupy an increasingly important position within the discipline.
Overall, the integration of artificial intelligence has substantially expanded the research horizons of area and country studies. The emergence of new research topics is, in turn, reshaping the discipline's broader research agenda. These developments create significant opportunities for future disciplinary innovation and provide greater scope for intellectual exploration. The arrival of the AI era therefore presents a valuable historical opportunity for area and country studies, laying the groundwork for a broader transformation of research paradigms.
IV. Artificial Intelligence Drives a Paradigm Shift in Area and Country Studies
Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming a major force in scientific research, with its influence rapidly extending into the humanities and social sciences. Against this backdrop, area and country studies are incorporating new methodologies, exploring emerging research topics, and developing research agendas suited to the AI era. The interaction among these developments is deepening interdisciplinary integration and contributing to the emergence of new research paradigms.
The emerging paradigm of area and country studies will integrate traditional research approaches with digital technologies. This paradigm will combine conventional fieldwork with the efficiency of emerging digital technologies in collecting and accumulating research data. By integrating the depth of fieldwork with the breadth of AI-enabled analysis, researchers can interpret their subjects through quantitative and computational data while also developing contextual understanding through participant observation. The ultimate objective is to produce a multidimensional and empirically grounded understanding of the realities of particular countries and regions.
The emerging paradigm will combine dynamically updated data with in-depth contextual knowledge. AI technologies allow researchers to continuously update relevant datasets and general regional knowledge, accelerating the accumulation of information and improving research efficiency. At the same time, researchers must recognize the importance of knowledge generated through qualitative investigations of regional cultures, customs, religions, and other distinctive social characteristics. Such contextual understanding provides insights into the unique features of particular regions and should serve as a foundation for constructing computational models. The emerging paradigm will therefore integrate dynamic data analysis with contextual and interpretive knowledge. This combination will enable researchers to identify both the enduring structural characteristics of regions and their changing short-term conditions, systematically improving the depth and accuracy of regional understanding.
The emerging paradigm will further promote interdisciplinary integration, offering new pathways for research in the humanities and social sciences in the intelligent era. Interdisciplinary integration is an inherent requirement of the development of human knowledge and a major direction of contemporary research in the humanities and social sciences. As an interdisciplinary field, area and country studies have historically been tasked with bringing different disciplines together through the study of particular geographical regions. Within the emerging framework, researchers can make fuller use of intelligent technologies, simulation techniques, and computational methods, strengthening the integration of approaches from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. These developments can provide valuable methodological and intellectual resources for the broader advancement of humanities and social science research. In the twenty-first century, the need for paradigm innovation in area and country studies has converged with the transformative wave of artificial intelligence. This historical convergence presents an important opportunity for disciplinary development. Artificial intelligence is not merely introducing new tools and perspectives into area and country studies; it is also driving a fundamental transformation in the discipline.
Original article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/zxzmX_p9RSfg3N9CJyQLQA
