Czech researchers to analyse China's influence

The new Palacky University research project deals with the cultural and political influence of the current China on its neighbours and will be based on field work and its subsequent empirical analysis, Frantisek Kratochvil, head of the university's Asian studies department, said on Thursday. "China has an enormous potential to polarise any debate that concerns it. We can see this also in Czech society where one group is very distinctively against and the other is in favour [of China]. By this project, we try to formulate our autonomous discourse about what China is and how it relates to its neighbours because if we act in fear we will act irrationally and if we do not have our own formulated vision and do not realise this influence, we will be manipulated," Kratochvil said.