BREAKING NEW GROUND

The author is professor of politics and director of the International Graduate Program in Politics at East China Normal University in Shanghai

Innovare, the Latin root for “innovate,” means “to renew,” and more inclusively, “to change.” Its contemporary English usage dates more recently to the late Elizabethan period of 16th-century England, and its growing usage at that time likely reflects the tremendous culture of changes that era experienced. In Chinese, the term most commonly used for innovate is chuangxin. While the Chinese term is much older, becoming an increasingly common expression in the seventh century during the early Tang Dynasty (618-907), etymologically speaking, its construction and meaning are remarkably similar with the Western term.

In both languages,