Oxford can play a bigger role in reflecting change(2)

The new center - with its state-of-the-art language labs for Mandarin training, seminar rooms and theaters with bamboo growing in the courtyard - is designed to engage with China at a whole series of different levels, some of which will be new.

Students from a series of different disciplines will attend the center to do specific courses related to their main subject.

"They will come and do their Chinese history classes if they are studying history or a China-related course or they are doing political science. One area in which we would like to expand, ideally, over the next few years is Chinese law. There is a huge amount of interest in that right now."

Mitter says that as a European center, Oxford can offer a different approach to that of the many China centers in the United States.

"North America has a number of distinguished China centers but there is always a feeling that with the present-day relationship between China and America, which is cooperative sometimes and constrained at others, that it is a competitive relationship between two great powers. I think Europe can have a different conversation with China."

He also believes the way China is studied in the United States is different from its study in the UK and the rest of Europe.

"We at Oxford and Europe come from a Sinologist tradition that perhaps owes its origins to the 19th century, although no one is exactly clear. It is about looking at China as an integrated whole.

"The United States is more dominated by the discipline of political science so, for example, someone there would call themselves a political scientist specializing in China and not a Sinologist."

Mitter believes the future could be in the concept of "new Sinology", popularized by Mandarin-speaking former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd.

"I heard him at a conference a couple of years ago. This is more about how the different bits of China fit together, such as history, literature and economics, which can't just be understood through social science tools."

Mitter is also keen to engage Oxford's Chinese students, the biggest foreign group after Americans at the university.

"Chinese Oxonians are absolutely going to be an essential part of the enterprise. We want to hold events and discussions at the center about things that matter to them about China such as the environment and current economic reforms."

Mitter hopes the center with its new building has the capacity to be a leading global center of learning about China in the years to come.

"I hope the establishment and opening of the China center will send out a beacon that Oxford is a place that takes China very seriously indeed."