From Text to Network: Constructing a Knowledge Graph of Taiwan-Based China Studies Using Generative AI
It provides a scalable, data-driven infrastructure for scholars in area studies and digital humanities to navigate and analyze regional knowledge systems, though it is incremental in applying existing AI methods to a new domain.
This study tackled the challenge of systematically organizing decades of Taiwan-based China Studies scholarship by using generative AI to extract entity-relation triples from 1,367 articles, resulting in a knowledge graph and vector database that enables network-based exploration of intellectual trajectories and research gaps.
Taiwanese China Studies (CS) has developed into a rich, interdisciplinary research field shaped by the unique geopolitical position and long standing academic engagement with Mainland China. This study responds to the growing need to systematically revisit and reorganize decades of Taiwan based CS scholarship by proposing an AI assisted approach that transforms unstructured academic texts into structured, interactive knowledge representations. We apply generative AI (GAI) techniques and large language models (LLMs) to extract and standardize entity relation triples from 1,367 peer reviewed CS articles published between 1996 and 2019. These triples are then visualized through a lightweight D3.js based system, forming the foundation of a domain specific knowledge graph and vector database for the field. This infrastructure allows users to explore conceptual nodes and semantic relationships across the corpus, revealing previously uncharted intellectual trajectories, thematic clusters, and research gaps. By decomposing textual content into graph structured knowledge units, our system enables a paradigm shift from linear text consumption to network based knowledge navigation. In doing so, it enhances scholarly access to CS literature while offering a scalable, data driven alternative to traditional ontology construction. This work not only demonstrates how generative AI can augment area studies and digital humanities but also highlights its potential to support a reimagined scholarly infrastructure for regional knowledge systems.