[5] Dominican accomplishments among the Chinese diaspora pale in comparison to the success of the Jesuits in mainland China, led by the renowned pioneer Matteo Ricci.
Unlike most of his predecessors and contemporaries, Ricci did not view the Chinese firstly as pagans or idolators, but as "like-minded literati approachable on the level of learning".
[7] During the Age of Enlightenment, sinologists started to introduce Chinese philosophy, ethics, legal system, and aesthetics into the West.
Though often unscientific and incomplete, their works inspired the development of chinoiserie and a series of debates comparing Chinese and Western cultures.
[citation needed][8] In 1732, Matteo Ripa, a missionary of the Neapolitan "Sacred Congregation" (De propaganda fide) founded the "Chinese Institute" in Naples—the first school of sinology on the European continent, and sanctioned by Pope Clement XII.
Abel-Rémusat's counterparts in England and Germany were Samuel Kidd (1797–1843) and Wilhelm Schott (1807–1889) respectively, though the first important secular sinologists in these two countries were James Legge and Hans Georg Conon von der Gabelentz.
In 1878, a professorship of Far Eastern languages, the first of its kind in the German-speaking world, was created at the University of Leipzig with von der Gabelentz taking the position.
[9] Stanislas Julien served as the chair of Chinese at the Collège de France for over 40 years, starting his studies with Rémusat and succeeding him in 1833.
[9] The image of China as an essentially Confucian society conveyed by Jesuit scholars dominated Western thought in these times.
[10] Secular scholars gradually came to outnumber missionaries, and in the 20th century sinology slowly gained a substantial presence in Western universities.
Maspero expanded the scope of sinology from Confucianism to include Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religion, as well as art, mythology, and the history of science.
The contribution of Granet was to apply the concepts of Emile Durkheim, a pioneer sociologist, to the society of ancient China, especially the family and ritual.
Scholars such as John King Fairbank promoted the "study of China within a discipline," an approach which downplayed the role of philological sinology and focused on issues in history and the social sciences.
[12] One of the earliest American scholars of Cold War China and Sino-American relations was Chinese-American Tang Tsou of the University of Chicago.
The anthropologist G. William Skinner called for the social sciences to make more use of China, but wrote "In recent years the cry has gone up: Sinology is dead; long live Chinese studies!"
He doubted that sinology was a tool that social scientists would still find useful,[16] while another historian, Benjamin I. Schwartz, on the other hand, replied that the disciplines were too often treated as ends in themselves.
[18] Another specialist in traditional China, Denis Twitchett, in reply to the back and forth of this debate, issued what he called "A Lone Cheer for Sinology".
Sinology, he continued, is used in too a wide range of meanings to be so confined: During the Cold War, China Watchers centered in Hong Kong, especially American government officials or journalists.
Mutual distrust between the United States and China and the prohibition of travel between the countries meant they did not have access to press briefings or interviews.
The Australian scholar Geremie Barmé, for instance, suggests a "New Sinology", one which "emphasizes strong scholastic underpinnings in both the classical and modern Chinese language and studies, at the same time as encouraging an ecumenical attitude in relation to a rich variety of approaches and disciplines, whether they be mainly empirical or more theoretically inflected.
[22] During the reign of Emperor Yongle, the first Chinese fleet arrived on the shores of the Arabian Peninsula, led by Zheng He, on his fourth voyage in 1412 AD.
Arabs such as Abu al-Hasan Ali al-Masoudi, who is a well-known historical figure in the Arabian Peninsula, made significant contributions to sinology.
Cairo University also established the Chinese Language Department in September 2004 becoming a major center for sinology is North Africa.
The book covers the history and adventures of a Chinese commander by the name Zheng He whose fleet went round the known world in seven voyages between the years 1415 and 1432.