"The trip that changed my life": Australian sociologist shares 40-year China journey

 For renowned sinologist and sociologist Professor David Goodman, China has been a constant source of inspiration both for his research and life, a country that has a deep history and is undergoing rapid modernization.

Goodman, the "China explorer," is director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, where he is also a professor of Chinese politics. Over the past 40 years, he has lived and worked in various Chinese cities, all in the pursuit of understanding China's social and political reality.

In an interview with Xinhua from his office in the Centre, Goodman detailed China's transformations over the last several decades, and shared his views on China's development as witnessed through his personal experience.

Goodman's studies on China began as an undergraduate at Manchester University in the 1960s. Before his first China trip in 1976, he had already studied Chinese for six years and read several books about China. However, even for a scholar describing himself as "open to understanding," China on the page did little to prepare him for China in the flesh.

"To me, all the literatures of China seem overgeneralized. They talked about China without variety. I hadn't realized the variety, even theoretically, that there were differences between different parts of China," he said.

"That trip was very exciting and changed my life. Because up until that point, I had wanted to be a social scientist who worked on China in social sciences. And after that trip, I decided, I have to go live in China for longer."

The shocking encounter sparked what was a 40-year quest for understanding the domestic dynamics of China. He has toured north, southwest, northwest and east China including some remote villages to study central-local relations, the way local areas interact with the central government. He interviewed entrepreneurs since the early 1990s to study the social dynamics behind their development. He has written a few books about China's social classes, particularly the rising middle class.

He was especially impressed by the intense variety across the country with regard to culture, customs, and local dialects -- "I can't think of anywhere else in the world where the notion of being Chinese, notion of the single country, trumps the notion of the part".

This unique solidarity has generated dynamic for China's economic growth and partly contributes to its unique path of development.

Goodman said China has developed fast over the last 40 years in ways of infrastructure, transport, highways and even the sewage system, concurrently bringing constant rises to people's standard of living. However, he thinks the gap between different areas is still a big factor that has prompted the vision of "common prosperity."

"In China, there are three different levels of economic development, the east coast, the center, and the west. The west is really a long way back, and it will take a long time to catch up to the rest, if nothing else happens."

Common prosperity is clearly designed to create a new welfare system at the local level by bringing together the local governments, welfare institutions such as schools and hospitals, businesses, and civil organizations, said the expert.

"Of course, there are still some areas which are poorer than others, and where children have fewer life chances than others. And those are the things that need to be worked on now and common prosperity certainly can help that," he said.

Common prosperity is currently one of Goodman's new research areas.

"We're starting a project on common prosperity to see how it's being played out in three different parts of China and try to discover both what is meant by common prosperity, and how it might operate in three different areas."

The project, which involves three cities of different social and economic development levels, namely Suzhou in east China's Jiangsu Province, Taiyuan in north China's Shanxi Province and Lanzhou in west China's Gansu Province, just started up and is expected to begin local fieldwork next year when he returns to China.

Goodman said he misses his friends in Suzhou, a city he has spent 9 years in, though he just came back to Australia last year.

"I'm going to go and see my friends ... and talk to people and see how things have changed, what roads have come, what buildings have changed, and so on...It's the change, which is ubiquitous."