H2 China Studies in Chinese

Whenever someone asks me about my subject combination and I state “BCM CSC”, I get confused stares. CSC - China Studies in Chinese, is a H2 subject that I offered at A Levels. As its name implies, I studied China, in Chinese. More specifically, this included China’s society, economics, politics, and foreign relations.

Taking on a brand new subject in JC is not easy. That being said, CSC was a subject I deeply enjoyed in my JC journey.

Throughout the curriculum, CSC focused on finding connections. As students of the subject, we learnt to link China’s economic growth to its changing societal structure and demographics, we drew connections between China’s internal political needs and the actions it took on an international level. In these 2 years, I learnt to question and think deeply - looking at the same issue from different perspectives from the individual to the government and finally the global sphere.

People who took CSC would also definitely share their experience sitting for the A levels examination, and more notably their experience writing an Independent Study (IS) Paper. For me, I researched the topic “中国的特使外交在多大程度上推动中国参与世界热点问题治理？” (in a loosely translated form: to what extent has China’s special envoy mediated diplomacy enabled it to take part in global hotspot issues) I would be lying if I said that the research process was easy. I spent many nights in front of my laptop desperately sieving through online journal platforms to find past literature that can allow me to find out more about my topic of study, but it is undeniably a niche topic that is not commonly discussed.

Nevertheless, I pushed through, with the help of my patient mentor in school, and finished my research. To date, I think that this experience has been one of the most academically fulfilling ones. Whilst a topic that focuses on international relations, I had the chance to discuss the situation at hand from a more political perspective, as well as consider China’s moves from the perspectives of other countries.

In terms of hard skills, this experience taught me research skills - after all, it is simply impossible to read through the thousands of journals that could be to my topic, in this case, an especially broad one. Instead, I learnt to pick out the most important details and start from there before branching out my research. In terms of soft skills, I think my key lesson was to never give up. There was a point in my research when I wanted to just give up and pick a different topic, but because I pressed on, I eventually gained a deeper satisfaction of conquering (or at least scratching the surface) a deeply complex issue that ultimately concerns how our World order plays out in the future. Ultimately, the ability to think deeply and learn quickly is what I enjoyed from this entire experience.

Another key part of H2 CSC is the bonds I formed with my classmates. “Connections” was not just a running theme in our syllabus, but also within our CSC community. Being a very content-heavy subject, each batch is often tasked to work together as a team to eventually prepare for the final A Levels examination. Be it through sharing notes, or helping one another read our written essays, nobody would have completed their H2 CSC journey without their classmates. I think that’s what’s so magical about this experience. Doing well in class still depended on your diligence, but it was also strongly supported by discussions with classmates to further one another’s ideas and spot one another’s blind spots. I think that is an experience that I will never forget.