When Beijing played host to the 11th Asian Games in 1990, it was the first time the People’s Republic of China had ever organized a large-scale international sporting event. Song Nianshen, then a high school freshman, recalls taking part in the choreographed opening ceremony — one of hundreds of students assigned to hold up placards representing images related to both the Games and the region.

Decades later, after a stint as an editor at the state-owned Global Times newspaper, followed by a doctorate in history from the University of Chicago, Song credits those Games as his first introduction to the concept of “Asia.”

Asia — whether as an object of solidarity or contestation — would define Song’s academic career. As a Ph.D. student, he wrote his dissertation on the complex array of territorial disputes between China, Korea, and Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Japan colonized Korea and pushed into northeastern China. Later, while teaching in the history department at the University of Maryland, he published “Discovering East Asia,” a Chinese-language book-length analysis of the spatial relationships between East Asian countries and their effect on contemporary international politics.

One of his motivations was to recontextualize these conflicts, not as an outcome of Western colonialism but as part of a much longer tradition of territorial contestation within Asia. This meant reframing the subject away from European colonial expansion and toward the internal drivers within East Asian societies.

Song, now a professor at Tsinghua University’s Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, built on that approach earlier this year with his latest book, “Mapping Asia.” Drawing on over a hundred ancient maps, he traces the emergence, evolution, transformation, and consolidation of Asia as depicted cartographically. In the process, he also examines how power structures — capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and nation-states — were represented and given life by these documents.

Through it all, he continues to focus on non-state actors such as missionaries, explorers, and, crucially, the Asian intellectuals who confronted and collaborated with them. “While colonial imperialism has undoubtedly shaped the global power structure since the 19th century, from another perspective, early forms of globalization — marked by frequent travel, thriving trade, and cultural exchange — have always existed and continue to endure,” he writes.

Earlier this September, Song sat down for a telephone interview with Sixth Tone about his research, his approach to Asian history, and what he believes makes Asia “unique.” The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sixth Tone: You spent many years as a student and academic in the United States. How would you describe the main characteristics of East Asian studies there?

Song Nianshen: The foundation of East Asian studies in the U.S. was established by scholars like John Fairbank, the namesake of Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. The scholarship of that generation was heavily influenced by traditional European Sinology, which focused on language acquisition and building strong expertise in philology and historical linguistics. At the same time, they integrated ideas from the social sciences, incorporating concepts from sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics into traditional Sinological work. Of course, their work was also shaped by politics — the Fairbank Center itself was a product of the Cold War. Many scholars of China studies in the U.S. at the time focused on questions like “Who lost China?” and sought to explain why the Chinese Revolution occurred, or else explored the tensions between Confucian culture and modernity.

By the 1960s and ’70s, a new generation of scholars started to emerge in U.S. East Asian studies. These scholars, shocked by the Vietnam War, began to reflect on and critique the traditional East Asian studies framework, and they introduced postmodern and postcolonial theories. I was trained within this intellectual lineage.

Sixth Tone: You mentioned being shaped by the second generation of East Asian studies in the U.S., but when I read your books, you don’t seem to fully adopt postcolonial theory. If anything, you seem to be critiquing it, at least in part.

Here’s the thing: I’m deeply influenced by postcolonial theory, especially its critique of modern international law and nationalist historiography, as well as its exploration of the internal historical dynamics in East Asian societies that went overlooked due to colonialism and the Cold War. In fact, it’s hard to find a scholar of my generation trained in the U.S. who hasn’t been influenced by that body of thought. The title of my book “Discovering East Asia” even nods to “Discovering History in China” by (the influential postcolonial thinker) Harvard Sinologist Paul A. Cohen.

However, I’ve also found that when doing detailed local history research, postcolonial theory oversimplifies things into binary oppositions, such as “native” versus “foreign,” or “empire” versus “nation-state.” This can abstract and distort the real historical experiences of a region.

Sixth Tone: Can you elaborate on that?

Sure. For example, postcolonial theory often argues that the concept of a nation is largely fictional or imagined, and mostly a response to colonialism. But is the idea of Chinese identity entirely fictional? Or simply a modern invention? Not exactly. The concept of modern Chinese nationality builds upon historical forms of identity and transforms them into a nationalist framework.

Another example, postcolonialism emphasizes the opposition between “indigenous” and “foreign.” But if you study the history of Northeast China, it becomes clear that this isn’t entirely accurate. This region had long been a crossroads for multiple ethnic groups and cultures, making it difficult to neatly distinguish between who is “native” and who is “foreign.” While colonialism certainly shaped the region’s modern history, there were also other factors at play that are richer and more nuanced than a straightforward colonial narrative.

Sixth Tone: So, you’re saying that Asia’s history shouldn’t be understood solely through the lens of postcolonial theory?

Exactly. If someone asks, “What is Asia?” there isn’t a simple answer. Is an Asian defined by black hair and yellow skin? By the use of chopsticks? No. Asia is a multidimensional, pluralistic space without a fixed center. It’s also open and constantly absorbing external cultures.

This plurality presents a challenge to modern philosophy, political theory, and sociology, which tend to seek universal definitions. But I believe that Asia’s diversity offers a fascinating way to rethink modernity and global values. It provides an alternative framework for how we conceptualize human society and envision our future.

Sixth Tone: The diversity you’re describing in Asia — how does it compare to cultural pluralism?

They’re not quite the same. In the West, cultural pluralism emphasizes that there are many distinct cultures, and each should be given its place and be respected. This is an admirable goal. However, in practice, it often devolves into identity politics, where people are classified into predefined categories based on certain criteria, and these identities are then assembled like pieces in a mosaic.

This mosaic-like approach to pluralism is quite unnatural because human culture is inherently fluid and shaped by continuous interaction and blending. Western cultural pluralism, by fixing people into rigid identities, leaves little room for fusion and change.

In contrast, Asia’s diversity is much more fluid. Different cultures coexist here in ways that are deeply intertwined. This is not the rigid patchwork of identities that cultural pluralism in the West often implies, but rather a natural fusion.

Sixth Tone: So, from this perspective, Asia offers a new way to rethink how the world is structured.

Yes. While it’s important to respect diversity, what we should ultimately aim for is a respect for dynamic, evolving diversity — not a rigid, unchanging form of it.

(Header image: Details of “Kunyu Quantu,” or map of the world, printed by Flemish Jesuit missionary Ferdinand Verbiest, 1674. Collected by Bibliothèque nationale France)