Remaking Chinese Science: Institutional Reforms and the Bifurcation of Scientific Careers in 21st-Century China

Sining Wang, The University of Hong Kong

Over the past decade, China's scientific field has undergone profound transformation, with publication output increasing nearly five-fold between 2009 and 2021. This expansion was driven by systematic institutional reforms that dismantled the long-standing "iron rice bowl" system, producing pronounced stratification among scientists while significantly increasing mobility. These reforms are best characterized as techno-nationalist in their core logic: the state strategically deployed neoliberal instruments—including competitive evaluation metrics, hierarchical talent classification systems, and the tenure-track system—as administrative tools to accelerate China's scientific catch-up. This study examines how these institutional reforms have reshaped the organizational landscape of science and influenced scientists' careers. Drawing on 110 in-depth interviews conducted across universities, CAS-affiliated institutes, and new-type R&D institutions in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Beijing, alongside multi-site fieldwork and archival research, it adopts a sociohistorical and career-oriented comparative perspective. The study traces how, beginning in the late 2000s, leading returnee scientists at Peking University and Tsinghua University transplanted the American independent PI and tenure-track model, which subsequently diffused across China's top universities by around 2020. At the state level, the national talent title system evolved from research funding mechanisms into powerful markers of scientific excellence, producing a hierarchical structure strongly resembling Merton's "Matthew effect." Together, these institutional changes have generated a bifurcation of scientific careers: one trajectory defined by overseas training, early institutional independence, and the accumulation of national talent titles; the other defined by domestically trained researchers embedded within large, senior-led research groups. This bifurcation reflects both the deepening stratification of China's scientific field and the persistent influence of state-mediated recognition on individual career outcomes, illuminating the broader relationship between the state, social institutions, and the conditions under which science is produced and practiced.

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 Presented in Session 19. Science and Expertise: Academic and Political Institutionalization