Rich in Discourse, Thin in Evidence: Mapping Chinese Scholarship on Western Civilization with AI Agents
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67148/fahss-2026-263Keywords:
bibliometrics; scoping review; AI agent; large language model; Western civilizationAbstract
In contemporary China, Western civilization functions less as an object of historical inquiry than as a comparative referent for theorizing China’s own civilizational path—yet the structure of this rapidly expanding literature remains unmapped. This study analyzes 300 articles on Western civilization published in CSSCI and Peking University Core journals (2014–2026), coupling bibliometric analysis with large language model (LLM) content synthesis in an auditable AI-agent workflow that integrates co-word network analysis, semantic topic modeling, and record-level coding of argumentation and evidence. Results document exponential growth after 2021 (a doubling time of roughly 2.3 years) and a discourse core organized around Chinese modernization and the “new form of human civilization,” while Western civilization history and literary-cultural studies contract in share. Theoretical-deductive (58.0%) and critical-hermeneutic (27.7%) argumentation dominate, and empirical-inductive work accounts for only 8.0%. The field is thus discourse-rich but evidence-poor, expanding along policy-coupled rather than evidentially consolidated lines. Four research gaps are identified, empirical, methodological, theoretical, and pedagogical, and show how AI agents can convert them into affordances for literature-mediated undergraduate teaching, operationalizing the research–teaching nexus.
References
[1] Chen, C. (2006). CiteSpace II: Detecting and visualizing emerging trends and transient patterns in scientific literature.
[2] van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2010). Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping.
[3] Wang, X., et al. (2024). Autonomous LLM agents for scholarly synthesis.
[4] Lewis, P., et al. (2020). Retrieval-augmented generation for knowledge-intensive NLP tasks.
[5] Tricco, A. C., et al. (2018). PRISMA-ScR: An extension of the PRISMA statement for scoping reviews.
[6] Bradford, S. C. (1934). Sources of information on specific subjects.
[7] Lotka, A. J. (1926). The frequency distribution of scientific productivity.
[8] Price, D. J. de S. (1963). Little science, big science.
[9] Callon, M., et al. (1983). Mapping the dynamics of science and technology: Sociological analysis of science policy.
[10] Aria, M., & Cuccurullo, C. (2017). bibliometrix: An R-tool for comprehensive science mapping analysis.
[11] Donthu, N., et al. (2021). How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: An overview and guidelines.
[12] Blondel, V. D., et al. (2008). Fast unfolding of communities in large networks.
[13] Kleinberg, J. (2003). Bursty and hierarchical structure in streams.
[14] Cobo, M. J., et al. (2011). An approach for detecting, quantifying, and visualizing the evolution of a research field: A practical application to the fuzzy sets theory field.
[15] Grootendorst, M. (2022). BERTopic: Neural topic modeling with a class-based TF-IDF procedure.
[16] Kasneci, E., et al. (2023). Large language models in education: A systematic review.
[17] Zhang, Y., & Zhou, L. (2026). Chinese modernization and the new form of human civilization.
[18] Xu, M. (2026). Mutual learning among civilizations and Western modernity.
[19] Han, Q., & Wang, Y. (2024). Civilizational discourse in Chinese social sciences.
[20] Cao, S., & Ming, K. (2026). Critiques of Eurocentrism in classical scholarship.
[21] Liu, H. (2025). Narrative analysis of Sino-Western civilizational interaction.
[22] Yan, J. (2024). Greek origins of Western civilization.
[23] Chen, L. (2026). Historiographic construction of the West as a research object.
[24] Zhang, R. (2025). Medieval European institutions and civilizational formation.
[25] Feng, X. (2025). Sino-Western encounters and modern Chinese civilizational consciousness.
[26] Liu, Q. (2016). World history textbooks and humanistic education.
[27] Yan, H. (2022). Teaching the origins of Western civilization.
[28] Liu, S., & Wang, Z. (2023). The Great Books tradition and Western civilization education.
[29] Qiang, Y. (2023). General education in the digital-intelligence era and civilizational crisis.
[30] Page, M. J., et al. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews.
[31] Lockwood, C., et al. (2015). Systematic reviews of qualitative evidence: Methodology and implementation using JBI.
[32] Campbell, M., et al. (2020). Synthesis without meta-analysis (SWiM) in systematic reviews: Reporting guideline.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
For all articles published in Axon Academic Publishing Institute journals, copyright is retained by the authors. Articles are licensed under an open-access Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, meaning that anyone may download, read, reuse, and quote the paper for free, provided that the original published version is cited. This ensures that the work receives maximum use and exposure, while giving proper credit to the authors.
In exceptional circumstances, articles may be licensed differently. If you have specific conditions (such as those related to funding) that prevent using this license, please notify the journal’s editorial office during submission. Exceptions will be considered at the publisher's discretion.
