Chinese organisations increasingly operate across the borders of China, and growing numbers of people from outside China are coming to live there. Professor Frank Pieke believes these movements have a significant effect on central and local government policy in China.

China is a one-party regime, yet elections are held for the local congresses. PhD candidate Wang Zhongyuan investigated how the Communist Party uses this democratic instrument to strengthen the authoritarian regime. PhD defence 31 January.

Xinrong Ma defended her thesis on 13 February 2018

Liu Puning defended his thesis on 25 April 2018.

Lu, Man defended his thesis on 28 September 2017.

These courses address all language skills: speaking, writing, listening and reading.

This thesis presents a thorough survey of the central aspects of the phonology of Shaoxing Chinese from a synchronic perspective and on the basis of recent theoretical phonological developments, with the secondary goal of casting some light on current issues in Modern Chinese (Mandarin).

Taught by top researchers from a wide range of disciplines, the MA Chinese Studies at Leiden University combines in-depth knowledge with advanced language proficiency.

Tonal bilinguals of two closely related Chinese dialects are amazing people. They handle two tonal systems in their mind; their two vocabularies are from closely related dialects, and they write translation equivalents with common Chinese characters. Their unique language situation makes their mind…

LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

This study proposes a theory for the encoding of specificity and definiteness in the Chinese nominal based on Cantonese, Mandarin and Wenzhou data.

Over a billion people live in China, it has the most spoken language in the world and is a major player on the world stage. Do you want to broaden your knowledge about this fascinating and powerful country? Study the language, culture, economy and politics on a high academic level with China Studies…

On 18 May 2022 Lan-Yi Yang successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Chinese Linguistics at Leiden University offers you an excellent opportunity to benefit from our long-standing expertise in Chinese linguistics

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

The Academic Language Centre Leiden offers Chinese language courses at three different levels and tailor-made Chinese language courses. The courses are practical in nature: focusing on the use of the language. More information can be found here >

Mei-Wen Chen defended her thesis on 29 June 2016

This research project focuses on the interaction of Buddhist institutions, Chinese central and local governments, and local gentry in the 'transforming temples into schools' movement.

In this research, for the first time a detailed description as well as systematic and comparative analysis of the final particle system in Chinese are provided.

What are the differences between the trade in Chinese herbal drugs in Europe between 1800 and now? Can we see the major metabolic changes after 200 yours?

On 19 September 2023 Tabitha Speelman successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This thesis investigates the connection between tonal realization and tone change (tone sandhi) in Wenzhou Chinese, and whether and how such a connection is conditioned by prosodic structure and focus marking.

This research project focuses on the thoughts of ethnicity and political orthodoxy in Medieval China by investigating Wang Tong’s works.

This study examines the mutual intelligibility between all 225 pairs of 15 Chinese dialects, in two main branches, i.e., six Mandarin dialects and nine non-Mandarin (Southern) dialects.

This study presents the first systematic investigation and detailed theoretical analysis of the temporal interpretations of sentences with bare (aspectually unmarked) predicates in Mandarin.

This project is a three-year collaborative research between European and Chinese researchers (2015-2018). As a part of the China-Europe “Understanding Population Change” Collaborative Research Initiative, the project utilizes multidisciplinary research methodologies (social and cultural anthropology,…

Today, knowledge is the most crucial element to stimulate organizational competitiveness and economic development.

This project proposes to connect two discourses highly present in contemporary literary criticism in China, as well as on the world literary scene and academic circles: the discussion on emigration literature and the concept of ‘essayness’ derived mainly from (post)modern Western theories of the ess…

Daniel Stumm defended his thesis on 16 April 2020.

The Leiden Political Economy Group (L-PEG) is a multi-disciplinary network of scholars with a research interest in (comparative / global) political economy based at Leiden University. Our members belong to various institutes and faculties across Leiden University, and from other universities across…

Chinese materia medica (CMM), comprising a diverse array of natural substances from plants, animals, and minerals, has been integral to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) throughout history. This study investigates the dynamic evolution of CMM, noting shifts in species for improved therapeutic effects…

Education in (Chinese) Medicinal Plants associated to the Hortus botanicus in Leiden - Which Traditional Chinese Medicinal plants can be grown in the Hortus? - Establishing of a database which Chinese medical plants are available in Dutch Botanical Gardens - Data validation (correct identification,…

What is a good data protection law? How does a good data protection law evolve? Is European data protection law a good one? And whether the European data protection applicable to China?

On the 4th of June, Menghui Shi successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Menghui Shi on this achievement!

How such did the traditional text of the Sinews Transformation Classic remain interesting to a changing readership?

This thesis investigates the processing of words written in Japanese kanji and Chinese hànzì, i.e. logographic scripts.

The project focusses on how US views of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia influenced its strategic interpretations of the region. Being eleven million strong, dispersed across the region and sharing ethnic ties with Communist China, interpretations of the diaspora intersected with key Cold War…

This project employs a systematic experimental approach to examine the interaction of these two hitherto independent lines of research (tone sandhi and focus realization) in six dialects of Chinese, which lie on a continuum between dialects with dense tonal distributions and sparser distributions. In…

How and to what extent the historic house (re-)constructs identity through image-making in China.