ABSTRACT
The world's biggest country, based on one of the world's oldest civilizations, soon also with the world's biggest economy, is having a serious look at peace studies. That will be a small step for China, but a major one for us who have been working in this field for almost fifty years. In this chapter I have been given the task of reflecting on the field of peace studies, something I will do with the warning that what you get from me is one person's perspective. Others will have other perspectives. We can enter this field from many angles, and it is important that we do so. Peace studies, like anything else, is a process. It has to be born and reborn, again and again. Our colleagues in Coventry University have entered the field via reconciliation. No doubt China will put its particular imprints on it. and I cannot wait! How will the Daoist, Confucian. Buddhist and other traditions find their ways into the field, and how will the daunting task of coming to grips with peace conceptually, theoretically, practically reshape them? How will the experience of China, between the Tundra, the Gobi desert, the Himalayas and the China sea. with almost no military excursions outside, but the subject of several incursions, with the Nanjing massacre by the Japanese Imperial Army as a major example, impact on peace studies?
