From 1921 he studied sinology in Leipzig. He is considered one of the founders of Soviet Sinology. Japan's textual scholarship had Chinese origin which made Japan one of the birthplaces of Sinology. He graduated in Indology, Sinology and philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven. Significance of the old/new text controversy is a debate topic in the modern sinology. Later, he succeeded Erich Haenisch as the head of the Sinology Department at that university. The Russian school of sinology was focused mainly on learning classical Chinese texts. The Additions for Sinology are two symbols for phonemic transcription of classical Chinese. The Area studies approach, especially in the United States, challenged the dominance of classical Sinology. Martin's work on sinology focused on topics both in Mainland China and Taiwan. In Japan, sinology was known as . The historian Yu Ying-shih received the inaugural Tang Prize in Sinology in 2014. The Additions for Sinology were added to the IPA Extensions block in Unicode version 4.0. "China; Chinese" (cf. Sinology) and "-phone" "speaker of a certain language" (cf. Research about "Jin Ping Mei "is Patrick Hanan first involved in a sinology research field.