Zihao Song
Zihao Song
Zihao Song studied International Politics and History at Xiamen University (2013-2017) and the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (2018-2021) and received Bachelor of Law, Bachelor of History and Master of History degrees. During this time his interests were the integration of states in early modern Europe and the social economy of the Old Babylonian period. In 2021-2022 he studied European Studies at KU Leuven in Belgium and obtained his Master of Art degree with thesis on the Carlsbad decrees. From October 2022, he conducts research on the relation between Habsburg empire and China at DSHCS.
Research interests: Global History, Intercultural Communication, Political and cultural history in the context of Sino-European relation.
Current research project: The mutual-perception between Habsburg empire and China from mid-19th century to the end of World War I
During this period, the Habsburg Empire gradually established official and unofficial ties with China as a proactive actor. China was undergoing a transformation from the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, and at the same time, traditional China was involved in the Western world system. Chinese perceptions of themselves and the world have undergone drastic changes and the main impetus for this has been the peaceful and violent engagement with Europe, the United States, and Japan. Since the resources and literature on both sides are not balanced, this study takes the Habsburg Empire as the object, firstly focusing on the documents from China (mainly government archives, newspapers and private works) and then exploring the evolution of the image of the Habsburg Empire in the Chinese context on the basis of them. Secondly Combining with the views of the Habsburg Empire on China, taking a middle position to explore the relationship and changes between the two concepts. The potential task is to determine the resource of of the view formation, the influential elements of the perception shifting, the difference of perceptions in different social sectors and the relationship between the mindset and the diplomatic policies. A corpus based on Chinese materials will be built in the research and a postcolonial perspective will be used for discourse analysis.