This essay begins with a general discussion on academic study as a continuous process of individual scholars in an academic community, related to problems and ideas of the age as its background; and its results as having both everlasting academic value and temporary practical value. In the second section it deals with the two kinds of destinies for any specific academic study in relation to claims of the age, as illustrated by the intellectual histories of both China and the West. Its third section is a retrospect of the attitude towards Chinese learning and culture in the past five decades in China and a general survey of the present situation of Chinese studies in the world. The last section is a re-interpretation of the results of any academic study as existing in the continuous process of academic study, and the preservation of the process from generation to generation as itslef the most important result. This essay then ends with an explanation of the purposes of this new journal, which is edited by a younger generation of the New Asia Research Institute and has a different nature from its sister publication, the New Asia Journal.