The main goal of this paper is to address a methodological and epistemological question which could be entitled “Chinese studies and the study of the present”. More specifically, I would like to use the opportunity of this conference to discuss the value of Grounded Theory (GT) and Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) for contemporary sinology. To do so, I will first outline two theoretical and methodological issues faced today by sinologists in the West, and then discuss whether GT's and ANT's fundamentals can relate to them and how.