ABSTRACT
Editors' Introduction: This brief essay is a concise statement of Yan's ideals for doing research in spite of the obstacles facing the development of political science in China. Yan criticizes "some people," probably referring to the likes of CCP ideologists Hu Qiaomu and Deng Liqun, who wish to make it a "political question" to study political phenomena in China (thereby excluding politics from legitimate intellectual inquiry and contention). Yan wants to free contemporary Chinese political science from the shackles of dogmatic Marxist theory and open up all questions of politics to investigation. No question has been definitively answered, there is no subject that cannot profit from further examination, he argues.
