He notes that when as early as 1941 Fairbank organized the Far Eastern Association (today: Association for Asian Studies), he abandoned the traditional model of Sinologists to research a new subject: modern China. This established the basis for the shift in the US from "Sinology" to "China studies."
張灝指出，早在一九四一年費正清組織「遠東協會」（即今天的「亞洲研究協會」）時，就倡議揚棄老式的「漢學」模式，以新的方法來研究新的主題﹘ ﹘近代中國，這種「創見」，奠定了美國從「漢學」轉移重心到「中國研究」的基礎。