Generally speaking, there are three approaches within the academic research on the revolution of 1911 and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. The first approach consists of finding and analyzing historical data in order to add new accurate facts about the actual historical process. The second approach uses new theoretical frameworks and concepts in order to explain the causal factors for the revolution in 1911 and the establishment of the Republic of China. The third approach consists of exploring the effects of those historical events on the history of modern China as well as on the economic, political and social developments in mainland China and Taiwan during the last century.

Currently, academic research in mainland China and Taiwan mainly adopts the first and second approaches to the study of the revolution of 1911 and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. However, whereas research in Taiwan focuses more on the establishment of a republican system of government and currently develops a new theoretical perspective on local transformation processes in Republican China, the focus of scholars in mainland China is laid more on the experiences and lessons of the bourgeois revolution, the struggle for national independence and the modernization efforts dominated by the CCP.

The conference in Vienna between January 8 and 13, 2012 will focus on the third approach. It will go beyond the different ideologies, professional interests and political realities which are still influencing current research on the subject, and analyze the historical processes of transition and transformation during the last 100 years initiated by the revolution in 1911 and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. Moreover, the reasons for the still unfinished character of these processes of transition and transformation will be explored from an international and macro-historical perspective.