Chinese academics dump Trump for research papers, citing lack of interest
- Scholarly mentions for US president plummet in China’s domestic journals
- Even at their peak, Donald Trump’s numbers were well below Barack Obama’s in Chinese studies
Chinese scholars appear to be losing interest in Donald Trump, with the number of academic papers citing the US president falling dramatically since his election in 2016, despite the ongoing trade war.
While the Chinese government continues to increase its spending on US-related research, the number of papers mentioning Trump has dropped from a high of 4,024 published in domestic journals in 2016 to just 141 up to the end of June this year, according to China’s leading academic search engine.
If the trend – which has tracked downwards by nearly 30 per cent and 40 per cent respectively each year – continues through the second half of 2019, search results on xueshu.baidu.com – which operates in a similar manner to Google Scholar – could take a record plunge of more than 80 per cent.
Baidu, the Chinese internet giant which operates the academic search engine, confirmed the accuracy of the results, but declined to comment.
Tang Shiqi, professor of political science at Peking University’s school of international studies, said he was not surprised that Trump-related studies in China had lost momentum, as there was a growing weariness towards Trump in Chinese intellectual communities.