This study aims to investigate the construction and evolution of the academic field surrounding China’s revolutionary heritage (HCRP), revealing the mechanisms through which a state-driven political concept transforms into an institutionalized domain of knowledge.
A computational discourse analysis, integrating dynamic topic models and complex network analysis, was performed on a corpus of 1,154 articles from Chinese core journals spanning from 2005 to 2023.
This study reveals a clear three-stage evolution: from ideological legitimation (2005–2016), through agenda expansion (2017–2020), to technical-managerial specialization (2021–2023). The field’s knowledge structure consolidated over time, shaped by a dual mechanism: the external force of state power providing stability via ideological “structural anchors” and the internal logic of academia driving thematic diversification.
This study offers a novel, dynamic framework for analyzing state-driven knowledge production. By computationally mapping the entire life cycle of an academic field from its political origins, it provides a replicable methodology for critical heritage studies and the sociology of knowledge, moving beyond traditional static or qualitative analyses.
