  With the rapid evolution of cross-strait situation, "Mainland China" as a
subject of social science study has evoked the voice of "Rethinking China
Study" among intelligentsia recently. This essay tried to apply an automatic
content analysis tool (CATAR) to the journal "Mainland China Studies"
(1998-2015) in order to observe the research trends based on the clustering of
text from the title and abstract of each paper in the journal. The results
showed that the 473 articles published by the journal were clustered into seven
salient topics. From the publication number of each topic over time (including
"volume of publications", "percentage of publications"), there are two major
topics of this journal while other topics varied over time widely. The
contribution of this study includes: 1. We could group each "independent" study
into a meaningful topic, as a small scale experiment verified that this topic
clustering is feasible. 2. This essay reveals the salient research topics and
their trends for the Taiwan journal "Mainland China Studies". 3. Various
topical keywords were identified, providing easy access to the past study. 4.
The yearly trends of the identified topics could be viewed as signature of
future research directions.
