Progressing slowly in new, boring work of Chinese philosophy (7)
I believe the answer is:
inching
'progressing' is the definition.
(inching is a kind of progressing)
'slowly in new boring work of chinese philosophy' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'in' is found in the answer.
'new' could be 'n' (common abbreviation eg NT for New Testament) and 'n' is located in the answer.
'chinese' could be 'ch' (abbreviation) and 'ch' is present in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for inching that I've seen before include "A small measure starts moving by slow degrees" , "Moving slowly and carefully" .)