Chapter 11 Connecting Digital Systems by Whom and for Whom?

Background and Historical Context

The term cyberinfrastructure is derived from the natural sciences. The U.S. National Science Foundation put the term into play in a 2003 report (Atkins) and followed in later reports by describing cyberinfrastructure as “an idea that has emerged . . . from some basic technological realities” that “have led researchers to envision a tightly integrated, planet-wide grid of computing, information, networking and sensor resources” (Hart, para. 1). As such, a cyberinfrastructure is more akin to a new knowledge environment or ecology of virtually connected organizational resources than only an amassing of research materials. Later, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) specified the role of cyberinfrastructure in humanities research (Courant, Fraser, Goodchild, et al.). Currently, more than fifteen years have passed, and it seems that the concept of research infrastructure in the digital humanities (DH) still fits such criteria—at least in the planning strategy of the American scholarly community. Other strategies have been devised in Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere (ESFRI; Australian Department of Education; UKRI). However, is the idea of cyberinfrastructure or a DH infrastructure readily applicable to research communities in non-Western contexts? How should we evaluate this issue, and who should serve as the target users and participants of such infrastructure?

Participating in globalizing and diversifying DH, this chapter offers a critical analysis of efforts to create a DH infrastructure in mainland China, where since the end of the decade of the 2000s, the need for such infrastructure has increasingly been recognized and more efforts have been made to build it.1 The focus has been on creating research infrastructures in particular—especially ones that can link various resources and systems not just for digital scholarship generally, but for the study of China specifically. We feel that these two concerns of DH infrastructure in China are substantially intertwined, and hence we integrate both into our discussion.

To set the issues in context, we start by noting that since the 1990s, the humanities in China have faced two main challenges. First, there has been a mismatch between the demand for talent required by society and the mode of education provided by the higher education system. Second, and in great part accounting for this mismatch, scholarly research and education have fragmented between the so-called two cultures—or, better, the “three cultures” of the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. Various reforms in Chinese higher education have responded to these conditions, including policies such as “quality-oriented education” (suzhi jiaoyu, 素质教育) instead of examination-oriented education; “general education” (tongshi jiaoyu, 通识教育) or liberal arts education, instead of professional education; “audiovisual education or ‘Electrified’ Education” (dianhua jiaoyu, 电化教育) instead of educational activities in traditional formats; and, most recently, the New Liberal Arts (xin wenke, 新文科) instead of the “traditional” humanities.2 Of these, it is the New Liberal Arts, proposed by the Ministry of Education at roughly the same time as the policies for the New Engineering and New Medicine, that can be seen as a response by the Chinese higher education system to the new information revolution impacting China since the second half of the 2010s.

The development of DH in China in the late 2010s and early 2020s coincided with the introduction of the New Liberal Arts (Chen, “Xin yilun, 新一轮”). Concepts about DH and its practices were thus incorporated into this national-level educational policy, which provides the context for our analysis of China’s recent infrastructural efforts and specifically its development of DH. Keeping in mind the particular context of China in this regard is important because, although in one sense DH was a Western import, Chinese scholars also established their own foundations for the field as early as the 1980s (Tsui, “Hua wen 华文”). Their efforts, which included initiatives for building an infrastructure for digital research, raised issues unique to the Chinese academy because the development of DH and its infrastructure had to relate to China’s institutions for humanities research in the higher education system as a whole. Any infrastructure involves a substantial investment of financial, human, and educational resources, and in China, these resources almost always rely on their larger institutional system, which is often state-led. This inevitably led to a need for coordination and adaptation, resulting in development paths for digital research infrastructure that are quite different from earlier paths elsewhere. This brought Chinese scholars today to a point where, even though some standard procedures and workflows for such an infrastructure are already under discussion, there are still many challenges for the basic development of DH (Zhu, Benjun, and Jiuzhen Zhang). For example, there are still some barriers for smooth and streamlined text mining of Chinese data, even for issues such as word segmentation for data in the Chinese language. Conditioned by the need to coordinate and adapt to larger institutional configurations and government-led initiatives, China’s DH infrastructure is emerging as a complex and diverse environment in which DH practitioners must survive, adapt, and grow.

Defining “Digital Humanities Infrastructure” in China

The concept of a DH infrastructure is a product of negotiation and adaptation in China. The Chinese academic community, including scholars in China and in digital Chinese studies, have only relatively recently (since the mid-2010s) begun to pay attention to such an infrastructure, adopting various understandings of its definition and main function and emphasizing different components and resources.

For example, Wei Liu, Rong Xie, and Lei Zhang suggest that DH infrastructure supports humanities research activities in general. This infrastructure then refers to all the documents, data, relevant software tools, public utilities, and services for scholarly communication and global publishing. Liu et al. thus emphasize the basic and instrumental role of DH infrastructure as an integrative scholarly function for users. They propose that such an infrastructure should be the foundation for humanities research activities that include working with research literature, data, software tools, utilities for communication and publication, and related services. In their view, the ongoing transition toward a national data infrastructure for the DH field is prompted especially, though not solely, by significant advances in data science, which allows researchers to work with larger, more complex, and more fully digital (i.e., digitally born) datasets than before. Data science–driven infrastructures can also facilitate collaboration across institutions and disciplines, making it easier for scholars in China to share resources and know-how and to work together on research projects. In addition, it can provide tools and techniques for analyzing, visualizing, and even crowdsourcing data, thus helping researchers identify patterns and connections that they might have missed using other methods. A national data infrastructure, therefore, has the potential to transform the way that scholars conduct research. Because Liu and his coauthors come from a library background (Liu was then the deputy director of the Shanghai Library), they are also very aware of the role of digital infrastructures in preserving knowledge, especially in meeting the challenge of permanently storing and providing access to materials.

In contrast to Liu et al.’s more general understanding of DH infrastructure as including but not necessarily focused on data, Cuijuan Xia (also based at the Shanghai Library then) narrows her definition to specifically emphasize data infrastructure. She focuses on the creation and organization of data, content, and knowledge as the crucial “part of the digital humanities research infrastructure” (Xia). In particular, she explains that there is a need to build a data layer that is independent of specific application development and domain research initiatives. Such a layer should also follow technical specifications for the long-term preservation and sharing of and public access to data. Xia thus centers on the knowledge-organization function of DH infrastructure in data science.

In a rather similar way, Zixin Rao, Luxiang Deng, and Xin Xu also present an alternative, data-oriented perspective on DH infrastructure, proposing not a DH infrastructure as such, but rather a “data infrastructure for humanities research,” to be precise. They define this infrastructure as the collaboratively shared tools, systems, platforms, software, and services that facilitate the preservation, acquisition, reuse, and publication of data in humanities work. They therefore emphasize the importance of data reusability, correlation, and aggregation, which they consider to be integral to any humanities research procedures. Their approach thus highlights the role of digital data as the primary driver of DH infrastructure in China.

These slightly varying definitions of DH infrastructure in China reflect the ongoing negotiation and adaptation of the concept within the academic community in China, demonstrating the need for further discussion and collaboration. Other, more specific recent discussions on similar topics have different foci and deserve some discussion here too. To mention some examples, Tao Chen, Rina Su, and Xun Sun, as well as Jia Yan, Min Yang, and Mei Peng, focus on image data infrastructure; Jiaqin Jin and Cuijuan Xia on the construction of an ontology for DH institutions; Dan Lu, Xin Li, and Jinchuan Chen on DH infrastructure based on application programming interface (API) technology; Lihua Wang and Yike Zhang on the significance of data competitions for DH infrastructures; and Chenfei Xu and Ping Bao propose a DH infrastructure specifically for advancing the field of agricultural history. With the exception of Liu, Xie, and Zhang’s paper in 2016, all these studies were published after 2019, and their authors are primarily based in libraries or information management, mainly in institutions such as the Shanghai Library, East China Normal University, and Nanjing Agricultural University. These institutions have dedicated DH teams, centers, or relevant DH projects, which explains why their conceptions of DH infrastructure converge and why they devote extra attention to the role of the gallery, library, archive, and museum (GLAM) sector in their writings. It is worth noting also that their definitions of DH infrastructure are not specific to any one context or nation; instead, they seek to introduce a universal definition in their works.

Certain pertinent discussions may not be confined to the Chinese national context but instead focus predominantly on Chinese studies, which as a field is unsurprisingly deeply rooted in mainland Chinese and Taiwan academia. Based on their experiences building the China Historical Geographic Information System (CHGIS) and the China Biographical Database (CBDB), Hongsu Wang, Lik Hang Tsui, and Peter Bol point out in a comprehensive overview of challenges faced by researchers in historical China studies that DH infrastructures serving as cyberinfrastructure can link two basic components: underlying technologies for computing, storage, and communication on the one hand, and various platforms, tools, software, and services running on those technologies on the other. They explore the need for a cyberinfrastructure integrating these levels to support the study of Chinese history and Chinese studies, arguing for a more coordinated approach to research infrastructure development to address the proliferation of databases and the increasing number of researchers involved in their development. Addressing challenges that include lack of standardization in data formats and metadata and the reluctance to share resources across projects. Wang and his coauthors propose a cyberinfrastructure that provides a common platform for data sharing and collaboration and discuss several tools that could be used to facilitate resource sharing, including object-oriented databases and software for processing Chinese-language data that can now be operated on networked personal computers. They underscore the importance of designing and implementing metadata standards specifically tailored to historical China studies that would enable researchers to easily discover and access relevant resources and, where possible, share their data with other stakeholders. They then turn their attention to the CBDB, which they describe as an example of a database project that has helped develop metadata standards that contribute to cyberinfrastructural development—for instance, data standards (which within this project are stored in “code tables”) for Chinese names, calendrical dates, geographical places, imperial offices, and other data for historical research. Their study also discusses the utilization of APIs in historical China studies, specifically mentioning the MARKUS tagging system developed by Hou Ieong Brent Ho and Hilde De Weerdt as an example of how APIs can facilitate the markup of Chinese texts by drawing data from other utilities and online databases to analyze, map, and compare texts (MARKUS). Beyond data curation and management, Wang, Tsui, and Bol assert that a cyberinfrastructure should offer platforms for scholarly communication, both online and offline, in both digital and analog formats, emphasizing the necessity of continued collaboration and communication among researchers, libraries, and database companies. In conclusion, they present a compelling argument for resource sharing in the Chinese history field, supported by concrete examples of tools and standards.

These discussions can be seen as an effort by Chinese DH academics to define a DH infrastructure. However, the current discussions are usually either pitched at the macro level of conceptualization or at the micro level of focusing on specific project cases. There is no systematic construction program like the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) or the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). This could mean that DH in China is still lacking in the development of an infrastructure, and more systematic approaches will first require addressing fundamental issues such as who builds the DH infrastructure, which we will turn to next.

Who Builds the Digital Humanities Infrastructure?

It is only in the past two decades that the concept of infrastructure has turned from the original context of physical facilities providing public services for everyday social life to being associated with terms such as science and technology, data, and research in the Chinese context. Infrastructure has become one of the new Chinese words frequently mentioned in state-of-the-field articles, acquiring additional prefixes to create new Chinese terms, such as shuzi jijian (数字基建, digital infrastructure), xin jijian (新基建, new infrastructure), and lüse jijian (绿色基建, green infrastructure). The development of science and technology infrastructure, in particular, is deemed an important national strategic policy in China. The Chinese central government has issued several strategic plans on such infrastructure, among which the most important official documents include the “Outline of National Medium- and Long-Term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006–2020)” (《国家中长期科学和技术发展规划纲要 (2006–2020 年)》), the “Medium- and Long-Term Plan for the Construction of National Major Science and Technology Infrastructure (2012–2030)” (《国家重大科技基础设施建设中长期规划 (2012–2030 年)》), the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for the Construction of National Major Science and Technology Infrastructure” (《国家重大科技基础设施建设“十三五规划”》), and other items addressing long-term planning and investment in science and technology infrastructure, especially major scientific and technological installations. Regarding the latter, for example, official statistics indicate that the fifteen science and technology infrastructure projects that have actually been carried out during “The Twelfth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China” and “The Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China.” (2011–2020) involved a total investment of over 30 billion yuan. In plans for such infrastructure projects, data infrastructure began to be frequently mentioned around 1998 in relation to geographical mapping and spatial science, especially as these approaches were associated with concepts such as “digital earth,” “digital city,” and related research topics that caught the attention of policymakers. The phrase research infrastructure appeared much later and did not become a standard phrase for Chinese stakeholders until after academic articles introduced the term, mainly in reference to research infrastructures in Europe, the United States, Japan, Australia, and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, throughout this period of growing awareness of the importance of research infrastructure, the humanities appeared quite distant from anything to do with infrastructure. Some scholars have discussed the reasons behind this long-standing disconnect. Xiao Long of Macau University of Science and Technology, formerly of the Peking University Library and Shanxi University and also the former deputy director of the China Center for Humanities and Social Sciences in Higher Education, points out that due to the uniqueness of humanities and social science research, a research infrastructure that aids the humanities is distinct from that for the natural sciences (Xiao). For example, requirements for hardware facilities in the humanities are usually smaller, and most humanities scholars do not need laboratories for their work. Instead, demanding academic requirements for scholarly documentation and information resources make the humanities and social sciences “literature-dependent” disciplines, not infrastructure-dependent ones. This argument seems bolstered by the fact that a large amount of money has been invested in China on the construction of text databases that archive and disseminate scholarly literature in the humanities and social sciences. Those familiar with the context of academic papers in China will immediately think of the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), an online publishing platform that owns the largest database of academic papers originating in Chinese academia and was developed by a Chinese state-owned software company linked to Tsinghua University. Even though Xiao has acknowledged the need for a humanities research infrastructure, she has referred to infrastructure only metaphorically in discussing the function of libraries.

However, the emergence of DH in China now creates a higher awareness of the need for a specifically humanities-oriented Chinese research infrastructure, even if it is still nascent by comparison with scientific and technological infrastructure. To elevate cultural digitization as a national strategy, the Chinese government in May 2020 issued its “Notice on the Proper Establishment of National Culture Big Data System” (guanyu zuohao guojia wenhua dashuju tixi jianshe gongzuo tongzhi 关于做好国家文化大数据体系建设工作通知)3 and in 2022, its “Opinions on Promoting the Implementation of National Culture Digitization Strategy” (guanyu tuijin shishi guojia wenhua shuzihua zhanlüe de yijian 关于推进实施国家文化数字化战略的意见) came out.4 These policies aim to construct a fundamental cultural digital infrastructure and service platform by the end of the “Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China” in 2025, and a national cultural data system by 2035. The national policy objective is thus a “cultural big data” infrastructure at all levels of government, with a standardized management system of data storage, production, processing, utilization, and exchange providing “physical distribution, logical correlation, rapid linking, efficient searching, comprehensive sharing, and key integration” for a panoramic digital view of Chinese culture (State Council, “关于推进实施,” para. 2). In essence, this will mean a mega-infrastructure built on top of various types of digital subinfrastructures.

Exploratory discussions and scholarly work on building DH infrastructure in China must occur against this backdrop of government policy. Yet a comparison with research infrastructures (particularly in the humanities) in Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States reveals that a more bottom-up, adaptive humanities research infrastructure—one that does not rely solely on top-down, policy-level interventions—is relatively underemphasized. The need for a more bottom-up, adaptive humanities research infrastructure is a lesson learned from past problems in constructing DH infrastructures in China. The national campaign to digitize Chinese ancient books is one example. Such digitization began in the 1970–1990s, with strong national policy support and aligned with the recognition by scholars that adequate DH infrastructure was necessary for research on Chinese documentology and the digitization of ancient books (Tsui, “Hua wen 华文”). In early 2007, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism officially launched the Chinese Ancient Books Protection Project, which received a 25 million yuan grant from the central government to protect Chinese ancient books and sustain traditional Chinese culture.5 Participating in the project (and responsible for hosting the project’s administrative office), the National Library of China collaborated in 2016 with other provincial and municipal libraries to create a digital platform (Zhonghua guji ziyuanku pingtai 中华古籍资源库平台) that released more than 102,000 digital images of ancient book items. Another case is the National Platform of Digital Resource of Ancient Books (Guojia guji shuzihua ziyuan pingtai 国家古籍数字化资源总平台), hosted by Gulian (Beijing) Media Tech. Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of the Zhonghua Book Company, a major publisher in the humanities. The platform is “guided and managed by the Office of the Leading Group of National Planning for the Collection and Publication of Ancient Books (quanguo guji zhengli chuban guihua lingdao xiaozu bangongshi 全国古籍整理出版规划领导小组办公室).”6 It aims “to solve the problems of dispersed ancient books digitization resources, low utilization rate, and duplicated construction . . . to build a national authoritative, integrated and public welfare ancient books digitization resource platform, to realize the convergence, concentration and effective utilization of the ancient books digitization resources, and to integrate the results of digitization of ancient books with related databases and digitization platforms.”7 The ambitious project echoes the series of national policies issued in 2022 in two main documents: the “Opinions on Promoting the Work of Ancient Books in the New Era” (guanyu tuijin xinshidai guji gongzuo de yijian 关于推进新时代古籍工作的意见), issued by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council, and the “National Work Plan for Ancient Books 2021–2035” (2021–2025 guojia guji gongzuo guihua 2021–2035 年国家古籍工作规划). These documents, along with other instances of state directives, currently represent a top-down approach to the development of DH infrastructure, especially for premodern Chinese books. However, as the National Platform of Digital Resource of Ancient Books mentions on its website, problems such as lack of integrated planning, the absence of uniform standards, and various technical limitations cannot be solved solely through top-down policy.

How best, then, to approach these challenges? As previously mentioned, discussions on DH infrastructure in Chinese academia often involve adapting concepts from Western contexts, while also attempting to establish a definition and approach for China. However, building infrastructure for DH work is not merely a technical matter akin to creating a data service system. Such infrastructure must be founded on a combination of scientific and technical concepts, hardware equipment, software development, workflows, team building, and a broader social-cultural ecology encompassing all stakeholders and participants. Equally important is the human “wetware”—the interactions between individuals and their engagement with systems—an aspect that extends beyond the scope of hardware and software infrastructure. Equally important, therefore, are human and social factors that contribute to the success and sustainability of infrastructure. This tenet is the core of the discussion that follows, about who is responsible for building China’s DH infrastructure and for whom is it built.

A Digital Humanities Infrastructure for Whom?

For whom is DH infrastructure in China being built? Answers to this question in China often align with state-led initiatives and their predetermined objectives for particular institutional and individual users. Three kinds of initiatives and their intended beneficiaries have been most important.

The first is the national, government-led initiative in the late 2010s and into the 2020s to build digital infrastructure, especially “new digital infrastructure” (xinxing shuzi jichu sheshi 新型数字基础设施). Part of China’s efforts to build “new infrastructures” (xin jijian 新基建), including infrastructures that are “digital, smart, and innovative” (State Council, “关于推进实施,”) this initiative was a crucial development priority for the Chinese government after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic because of the importance of digital technologies in controlling and mitigating the pandemic’s effects and for supporting economic growth. New infrastructures created for initiatives such as this provide resources and support for government bodies, businesses, and individuals to thrive in a rapidly changing digital landscape. They are public-facing in creating 5G networks, data centers, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things, and so on.

The second kind of initiative that we identify here are infrastructural projects spearheaded by actors in the GLAM sector in China. These serve the needs of the GLAM institutions themselves and their patrons and often focus on specific types of collections or data. An example at the national level is the National Science and Technology Library (NSTL) (Guojia keji tushu wenxian zhongxin 国家科技图书文献中心), an information network infrastructure and virtual institution set up in 2000. It links national-level libraries and major institutions while coordinating standards for scholarly information resources and administering the sharing of resources among national research institutes. NSTL also focuses on collecting scholarly papers, databases, and documents in science and technology published in China to provide research support services. Approved as part of this initiative in 2001 was the National Science and Technology Digital Library (Guojia keji shuzi tushuguan 国家科技数字图书馆), which led to the establishment of a network of centers offering digital library services focused on scientific literature.

The third kind of initiative, and the one most immediately relevant to DH, concerns developing academic-led DH infrastructures. These projects are mainly developed by academic institutions, researchers, and research groups, and they address the scholarly community through outputs in such traditional scholarly formats as articles in DH journals. Notably, there are now at least four DH periodicals in Chinese published in the China region. These include one from Taiwan, Shuwei diancang yu shuwei renwen 数位典藏与数位人文 (Journal of Digital Archives and Digital Humanities), and three from mainland China: Shuzi renwen 数字人文 (Digital Humanities), Shuzi renwen yanjiu 数字人文研究 (Digital Humanities Research), and the homonymous (in Chinese) Shuzi renwen yanjiu 数字人文研究 (Digital Humanities Studies). Beyond producing traditional scholarship, however, academic-led DH infrastructures have the key benefit of enabling diverse outputs adapted to digital scholarship. As digital technologies continue to advance, researchers in China are increasingly exploring new, creative ways to share research findings—including through such born-digital materials as historical GIS data generated and curated by scholars. For this purpose, DH platforms have been developed to enable uploading, analyzing, visualizing, and sharing Chinese data (and data in Chinese). Some of these platforms are geared specifically toward premodern Chinese humanities. Examples include DocuSky, Jihe Net (籍合网), MARKUS, Shanghai Library’s Open Data Platform, and Zhejiang University’s Chinese Academic Map Publishing Platform, among others currently under development (Tsui, “Charting the Emergence of the Digital Humanities in China”).

To better understand the significance of academic-led digital research infrastructures, we will briefly survey four projects with infrastructural functions. The first two are projects dealing with the intersection of textual and geospatial data that emerged from efforts to map literary writers and texts in premodern China. One, Sou-yun (搜韵)—the largest website for Chinese poetry—incorporates numerous functions for accessing, analyzing, and mapping traditional Chinese poems. With more than 5.5 million users by 2020, it testifies to the high demand for accessing such poetry for literary appreciation and education.8 While academics curate Sou-yun’s core data (as in the case of its “Chronological Map of Tang-Song Literature,” led by literary scholar Wang Zhaopeng), the project is a community-driven resource—one more successful than most academic databases in promoting a specific field of humanities study (Wang and Qiao). The second project that we discuss along with Sou-yun is the Chinese Academic Map Publishing Platform (AMAP) from Zhejiang University, which also relies on crowdsourced data and allows users to map their own data on the platform. AMAP enables the accumulation of spatiotemporal datasets and provides integrated visualization tools for these datasets.

The second pair of cases briefly considered here are MARKUS and DocuSky, which fulfill multiple infrastructural functions for DH research. Led by digital humanists working with primarily Chinese-language data, both platforms focus on the online storage, processing, visualization, and sharing of texts. MARKUS, mentioned earlier, is a “reading and text analysis platform with a wide range of functionality,” which helps researchers tag and annotate Chinese and Korean texts (MARKUS). DocuSky is an “online platform for humanities scholars to organize, use, and analyze personalized materials to meet their research needs.”9 Designed especially with the needs of humanities researchers in mind, these projects facilitate tracking and intervening in data analysis. Enabling conversion between text-markup formats and locally processed downloaded texts, they do not “lock in” users, in the manner of other projects that make it easy to ingest data but then difficult to export that data to other platforms in other formats. In addition, both MARKUS and DocuSky offer user-friendly environments with interface designs and how-to manuals notably attentive to the needs of humanities scholars. Both platforms also work with APIs for interoperability with other databases, facilitating data sharing and integration.

The development of the four projects mentioned here adopts a model of collaboration between humanities scholars and technical experts. For example, Sou-yun’s developer is an engineer and poetry enthusiast who collaborates with humanities scholars led by the literary scholar Wang Zhaopeng; AMAP is built by scholars of premodern literature inspired by a collaboration with Harvard University’s Center for Geographic Analysis team; MARKUS is supported by a specialized team that includes both humanities scholars and software engineers; and DocuSky is constructed by the first batch of Taiwan’s DH scholars, who combine computational expertise and scholarly literacy in the humanities.

Broadly, these projects show that multidisciplinary collaboration is feasible for humanities research. One could even say that they represent to some extent a possible model for DH infrastructure initiatives. But sadly, not all digital infrastructure projects for humanities scholars in China learned from such a collaborative model. For a long time, building a database or developing a digital tool was taken to be the work of software engineers and could be delegated to them. This is one reason that digital infrastructure for the humanities has often been outsourced to companies with technical experts or libraries with a dedicated staff in technical services. Lacking technical skills, humanists were not traditionally involved in creating or evaluating infrastructure in these scenarios. This practice is rooted not only in the division of the “two cultures” or “three cultures,” but also in the underlying disciplinary structures of higher education in China. One view is that the work of making digital infrastructures is exclusively that of a different branch of knowledge work done by IT engineers or librarians, not the domain of humanists. However, there are promising signs of change in the DH landscape in China, particularly in how interdisciplinary research groups operate. For example, a research group led by James Lee and Cameron Campbell based mainly at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has shown that humanists are definitely able to conduct humanities and social science research involving the building of databases and digital infrastructure (Liang, Dong, and Li). More humanists are thus now recognizing the importance of participating in developing these infrastructures to support their scholarly work. To build a broad-purposed digital infrastructure that meets the needs of a diverse range of academic users, a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach is needed—one that involves humanists, artists, and designers in ensuring that user experience and design are optimized for humanities research. In addition, the participation of community members is essential to ensure that infrastructure addresses the needs of diverse communities and enables the sharing of data.

Future Challenges for the Chinese DH Community

One main future challenge for DH and its infrastructure in China concerns the resources and attention that will be needed for growth within the broader institutional infrastructures of higher education. Here, it is imperative to examine DH specifically in light of undergraduate education. According to the Ministry of Education, there were 47.63 million enrolled students (including undergraduate and graduate students) in the country in 2023, making China’s higher-education system the largest in the world.10 If the objective for DH infrastructure in China is to improve what we earlier called the overall “wetware” and not only the hardware and software of DH, then creating suitable curricula, teaching materials, and training courses for undergraduates should be a central focus. But DH education in China has yet to receive the attention and support necessary to be established on a solid foundation.

Leading Chinese universities—including Peking University, Nanjing University, Renmin University of China, Wuhan University, and Zhejiang University—all offer some DH courses to undergraduates (Tsui, Zhu, and Chen). For instance, Nanjing University, which one of us works at, has extended its offerings to a massive open online course (MOOC) in DH and open to the public,11 while Renmin University of China has developed a more comprehensive honors program in digital humanities consisting of eighteen courses (School of Information Resource Management, Renmin University of China).12 With the exception of the MOOC, these courses are usually electives. Such courses cover essential DH theories and such areas as digital history, digital art history, historical GIS, data visualization, and the usage of relevant software. Universities in China also provide short-term DH training programs in the form of one- or two-day workshops, one- or two-week summer schools, or one-off lectures offered by academic departments (Tsui et al.).

Yet on the whole, the institutional infrastructure for DH teaching in Chinese higher education remains inadequate, and DH courses have yet to be truly incorporated in the general undergraduate education curriculum. At the beginning of this chapter, we discussed general education and New Liberal Arts as the current state-sponsored models for the humanities within the Chinese higher education system. But DH has not been formally recognized as part of either paradigm. Instead, it is viewed as training in digital skills or as a driver for innovation.13 Relatively narrow views of the scope and importance of DH teaching are compounded by the general shifting of resources and attention in universities away from the humanities, toward increasingly prominent professional schools such as those in engineering and business and law. These are perhaps not specific to China, but such factors certainly constrain the advancement of humanities education in Chinese universities generally and DH education specifically.

Another infrastructural challenge for the DH community in China concerns the lack of coherent organization of DH researchers in relation to available infrastructures. Currently, DH scholars are very decentralized, with some clustered in the library and information science fields and others gathered around interdisciplinary initiatives or settings (such as DH centers or publication projects, including academic journals). In this framework, researchers and technological infrastructures cannot bond together into the kind of cohesive community envisioned in early, optimistic views of DH such as that expressed in the “Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0,” which argues that DH “dreams of models of knowledge production and reproduction that leverage the increasingly distributed nature of expertise and knowledge and transform this reality into occasions for scholarly innovation, disciplinary cross-fertilization, and the democratization of knowledge” (Schnapp and Presner, 5). Such a vision of DH is inspiring, but transforming institutional and technological infrastructures particularly in a higher education framework toward this goal is still hugely challenging, especially when the framework distributes resources strictly by disciplines. Creating interdisciplinary communities and cross-fertilizing the knowledge of their members is a process that requires constant, persistent work.

One effort in China to address such challenges is the Chinese Alliance of Digital Humanities Institutions (CADHI), an institutional consortium and special committee on DH that (because it is difficult to set up entirely new professional scholarly associations in China with official standing) launched under the umbrella of the already established Chinese Society of Indexing. The CADHI currently comprises DH institutions from more than ten universities, publishes annual reports, and holds an annual conference (most recently, CDH2023 in Wuhan, CDH2024 in Shanghai, and CDH2025 in Guangzhou).14 However, its infrastructural potential has yet to be fully realized, as not many regular activities have been implemented. Nonetheless, the alliance represents an important step toward establishing a more cohesive and organized DH community in China.

A third significant infrastructure-related challenge for the Chinese DH community is the lack of sufficient assistance by professional staff—such as engineers, librarians, artists, designers, and others—acting as supporting teams or teaching auxiliaries. This problem can be attributed in part to the structural makeup of Chinese universities, which are heavily staffed by faculty and administrators while offering inadequate opportunities for engineers or researchers in project-funded positions, especially in the humanities fields. In addition, financial-management policies in universities make it difficult to hire project-based staff; and, of course, even if available, project funding is not guaranteed in the long term. For DH, long-term planning is thus very challenging and project sustainability is imperiled. As a result, many DH projects in China have historically taken the form of partnerships with companies. Researchers often delegate the technical implementation of projects to companies or collaborate with them on spin-off projects. This practice of outsourcing technology infrastructure has led to technical inertia among academic researchers and hindered their ability fully to control or lead the technical development required for scholarly advances in the humanities. Moreover, this practice inhibits scholarly community building since the interests and priorities of corporate partners do not always align with those of scholars. An example of recent efforts to address this issue is the partnering of Peking University’s Research Center for Digital Humanities with ByteDance (a large Chinese tech company) to support research infrastructure. In 2022, the center received from ByteDance Public Welfare a donation to conduct research on the intelligent development and utilization of ancient books. The PKU Digital Humanities Lab operating under the Peking University Institute of Artificial Intelligence was then renamed the Peking University–ByteDance Digital Humanities Open Lab. Because the contribution by ByteDance was in the form of a donation, and thus less strictly defined in its uses than government or university research funds, the lab has more flexibility compared to other university and company initiatives.15 But such examples remain uncommon.

How public communities can engage in the work of DH community is also a challenge that warrants exploration at the level of infrastructure building. The GLAM sector recognizes the importance of public engagement in DH. For example, the Shanghai Library has been actively working for many years to establish a DH infrastructure for public use. The Chinese Genealogy Knowledge Service Platform is a notable example. Similarly, the Shanghai Museum has introduced an online interactive platform to accompany its exhibit of works by Dong Qichang (1555–1636), a famous Chinese artist of the Ming Dynasty. The platform employs digital methods to showcase the artist’s life, works, and social networks. Public cultural institutions with resources like these are experienced in creating public-facing DH projects. But by contrast, many university-based DH projects address only the research needs of specific scholars, making it difficult due to intellectual property and other concerns to provide access to their outcomes even to other scholars, let alone the public. Largely absent in university-based DH projects is any opportunity for the involvement of public communities, even when platforms that might allow for this are in place (Chen, “Dangxia 当下”). The goal of public access to DH work is increasingly emphasized within the international DH community. China’s university-based DH initiatives also need to make more of an effort in this direction.

This chapter cannot by itself cover all aspects of DH infrastructure in China, of course. We have tried to provide a brief overview of the development of DH infrastructure in the nation by surveying how Chinese DH infrastructure is defined and who its builders and beneficiaries are. However, we can do no more than give a glimpse of the spots, as when “a leopard is seen through a tube” (as in the Chinese saying: guanzhong kuibao 管中窥豹). Even such a glimpse, however, allows us as Chinese DH researchers to conclude by sharing our hopes and concerns for the future development of DH infrastructure in China.

On a positive note, we hope that the Chinese government’s determination and ability to build infrastructure from the top down may benefit DH. The association of DH with digital technology, AI, and other sci-tech areas may make it an object of attention for the government. This should be a good development for DH, and possibly the humanities more broadly, given the rather difficult situation of the humanities globally at the moment. Second, we are encouraged by rising attention within the Chinese DH community itself to the need for infrastructural development. As we are revising this chapter, a number of new centers and platforms have appeared and will have an impact in the near future.

But, of course, it is impossible to ignore what may be negative impacts of the expectations mentioned in this discussion. Government support comes with policy guidance, and the result may be that the development of DH infrastructure will for some time be centralized and top-down. This would impose inflexibility on the whole system, constraining academic users of DH infrastructure from addressing their needs and working on their ideas in responsive and effective ways. Also, the rise of interest in DH infrastructure (in association with an enthusiasm for all things scientific and technological in our day and age) may in the worst case result in a bubble that is destined to burst for lack of a stable, integrated, and sustainable infrastructural foundation that can truly support humanities research and teaching. It will require the strength of the whole Chinese DH community to act on its hopes by addressing its challenges.

Notes

Acknowledgment: Jing Chen’s work as a coauthor of this chapter is sponsored by the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 21BA026) and Lik Hang Tsui’s work is sponsored by Hong Kong’s Research Grants Council General Research Fund project “An Analytical History of the Early Years of Digitising Chinese Historical Sources (1980–2009): The View from Five Foundational Database Projects” (No. 9043453 [CityU 11604422]).

1. 1. See also our recent chapter in Global Debates in the Digital Humanities, which in some parts touches on issues of cyberinfrastructure in relation to Chinese DH (Chen and Tsui, esp. 82).

2. 2. “Audiovisual education” or “Electrified education” (dianhua jiaoyu, 电化教育) was promoted by the central government of the Republic of China in the 1930s as a national policy, as in such cases as “The Principal Law for Electrified Education” (dianhua jiaoyu zhongyao faling, 电化教育重要法令) from 1932–1936. Following the development of audiovisual education in Western countries, the campaign aimed to take advantage of film and broadcasting as mass media to transform the education system from a traditional model into a modernized one. (For more information, see Guangsheng Du and Jing Zhu.) This was also taken up under the People’s Republic of China. The campaign for “quality-oriented” education (sushi jiaoyu, 素质教育) was then launched around 1995. The Ministry of Education announced a series of polices to guide higher-education institutions in enhancing and promoting humanities education that is integrated with science education, which for a long time prior to the 1990s was considered much more important than the humanities. General education (tongshi jiaoyu, 通识教育), inspired by the U.S. model of higher education grounded in the liberal arts, was then introduced as a reform of humanities education in several top universities in China beginning in the 2000s. (The universities affected include Sun Yat-sen University, Tsinghua University, and Nanjing University, among others.) Subsequently, general education became a national campaign in higher education recognized by the Ministry of Education. When the “Implementation Plan for the Audit and Evaluation of Undergraduate Education Teaching in General Colleges and Universities (2021–2025)” was issued in 2021, general education was included in the undergraduate curriculum in colleges and universities. (More detail can be found in the papers of Shuzi Yang and Yang Gan.) The New Liberal Arts (xin wenke, 新文科) is the latest policy in the humanities. Announced in 2020, its purpose is to encourage cross-disciplinary research in the humanities, science, and technology. The policy especially emphasizes using new technologies such as IT and AI for research and training in the humanities. For more information, see “The Manifesto of Construction of the New Liberal Arts” (xin wenke jianshe xuanyan, 新文科建设宣言, November 2020), https://jwc.cuc.edu.cn/2022/0114/c6974a190755/page.htm.

3. 3. See http://www.gsass.net.cn/zdxm/whypt/zlhj01/content_3972.

4. 4. See http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2022-05/22/content_5691759.htm.

5. 5. This project is guided principally by the official document of the “Opinions on Further Strengthening the Protection of Ancient Books” (guanyu jinyibu jiaqiang guji baohu gongzuo de yijian, 关于进一步加强古籍保护工作的意见) issued by the General Office of the State Council. The National Center for the Protection of Ancient Books of China was under the National Library and assumes the responsibilities of professional guidance center, training center, and research center for the protection of ancient books of the country. For more information, see the official report on the Chinese Ancient Books Protection Project (zhonghua guji baohu jihua, 中华古籍保护计划) in 2008: https://zwgk.mct.gov.cn/zfxxgkml/ggfw/202012/t20201205_916516.html.

6. 6. The Leading Group of National Planning for the Collection and Publication of Ancient Books (quanguo guji zhengli chuban guihua lingdao xiaozu, 全国古籍整理出版规划领导小组) was set up in 1958, halted during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, and resumed in 1981. The main function of the group is to be responsible for the collation and republication of material from ancient Chinese books. This Leading Group office is led by the National Press and Publication Administration (Guojia xinwen chubanshu, 国家新闻出版署) and is considered to be the highest administrative office for ancient book preservation and digitization in China.

7. 7. See http://read.nlc.cn/.

8. 8. User statistics are taken from the Sou-yun site: https://sou-yun.cn/about.asp.

9. 9. See https://docusky.org.tw/DocuSky/.

10. 10. See http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_sjzl/sjzl_fztjgb/202410/t20241024_1159002.html.

11. 11. For example, see https://www.icourse163.org/course/NJU-1465603161.

12. 12. See https://irm.ruc.edu.cn/rcpy/bss/b_zyjs/szrwzy/index.htm.

13. 13. When we applied to design a new DH course for undergraduates at Nanjing University, we were told that such a course should be listed under the category of “innovation and entrepreneurship” (chuangxin chuangye, 创新创业) because it imparts new digital skills. Instead of calling it “Introduction to Digital Humanities,” therefore, we should call it something that includes the term innovation in order to fit the course catalogue and its categories. In the end, we called our course “Innovative Thinking and Methods in the Digital Humanities” (shuzirenwen chuangxin siwei yu fangfa, 数字人文创新思维与方法).

14. 14. See https://simjwz.whu.edu.cn/info/1073/13481.htm; https://schim.shu.edu.cn/info/1375/8863.htm; https://ischool.sysu.edu.cn/zh-hans/event/718.

15. 15. See https://pkudh.org/intro.html.

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