Scholarly environment could see a targeted uprising across the borders of China (8)
I believe the answer is:
academia
'scholarly environment' is the definition.
(the scholarly or academic world)
'a targeted uprising across the borders of china' is the wordplay.
'targeted' becomes 'aimed' (I've seen this before).
'uprising' shows that the letters should be reversed in order.
'across' is an insertion indicator.
'the borders of' means to remove the middle letters.
'china' with its middle removed is 'ca'.
'aimed' in reverse letter order is 'demia'.
'a'+'demia'='ademia'
'ademia' placed around 'ca' is 'ACADEMIA'.
'could see' acts as a link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for academia that I've seen before include "Scholarly world" , "university circles" , "schools and universities" , "Universities etc." , "Educational community" .)