About China Development Research Foundation

China Development Research Foundation

The China Development Research Foundation (CDRF) is a national public foundation based in Beijing, established in 1997 and registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs. It operates under the Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC), the Chinese government's leading policy research and advisory body. CDRF's stated mission is to advance good governance and public policy in order to promote economic development and social progress. It is best known internationally as the organiser of the China Development Forum, the high-level annual conference held in Beijing each March, but its work extends well beyond the forum: the foundation runs social pilot projects in fields such as child development and green development, and undertakes major research projects on economic, social and sustainable-development questions, publishing its findings in Chinese and English through cdrf.org.cn.

Origins and Institutional Position

CDRF was initiated in 1997, at a moment when China's reform programme was deepening and the DRC wanted a flexible, non-governmental vehicle that could raise funds, convene international dialogue and test policies in the field. As a foundation rather than a government bureau, CDRF could accept donations from Chinese and international enterprises, organisations and individuals, and could experiment with projects that a ministry could not easily run. Its official self-description summarises the resulting model: through its work, CDRF's policy proposals have received much attention — and in some cases instructions — from the central leadership, and the foundation has become a high-level think tank featuring international exchanges, social experiments and policy research.

The foundation's credibility has been formally recognised within China's social-organisation system. In 2010 and again in 2015 the Ministry of Civil Affairs named CDRF a "National Advanced Social Organisation", and in 2019 and 2024 it was awarded a 4A grade in the China Social Organisation Evaluation Grade administered by the ministry. Its Institute of Child Development has separately received the honour of "Model Collective of National Unity and Progress" from the CPC Central Committee and the State Council.

Leadership

The foundation's current chairman is Zhang Junkuo, a former vice president of the Development Research Center of the State Council and a member of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. The figure most closely associated with CDRF's creation and character, however, is Lu Mai. Lu became the foundation's secretary general in 1998 and led it for many years before moving to the role of vice chairman; he has also served as secretary general of the China Development Forum.

Lu Mai's own account of the foundation's early years illustrates its improvised beginnings. In a commencement speech at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management, he recalled that when DRC leaders assigned him in 1999 the mission of organising an international forum as prominent as Davos, the foundation had only three staff. Drawing on his overseas study experience, personal networks and DRC support, the small team nonetheless staged the first China Development Forum in 2000. Under Lu's leadership CDRF also organised and coordinated the China Human Development Report 2005, which won widespread acclaim and received the United Nations Development Programme's 2007 Human Development Award for Excellence in Policy Analysis and Influence.

The China Development Forum

The China Development Forum (CDF) is CDRF's flagship undertaking and one of the most closely watched events in the Chinese policy calendar. Initiated in 2000 and initially conceived by then Premier Zhu Rongji — who, according to the forum's history, viewed it as a stress test for leading officials and encouraged debate with the foreign experts in attendance — the forum is hosted by the Development Research Center of the State Council and organised by CDRF. It is held annually at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, immediately after the National People's Congress and the CPPCC — the "two sessions" — making it the first major state-level international conference of China's political year.

The forum's mandate is summed up in its own phrase, "engaging with the world for common prosperity". It brings senior Chinese government officials together with leaders of multinational corporations, heads of international organisations and Chinese and foreign scholars for candid discussion of China's development and its place in the world. Recent editions show its scale and flavour: the 2024 forum, held on 24–25 March under the theme "The Continuous Development of China", and the 2025 forum, held on 23–24 March, which marked the forum's 25th anniversary and drew more than 80 representatives of multinational corporations to Beijing. For global business, attendance at CDF — and the customary meetings between foreign delegates and China's premier — offers an early reading of policy direction for the year ahead, and CDRF's role as organiser places the foundation at the centre of that exchange.

Social Experiments: Piloting Policy in the Field

What distinguishes CDRF from a purely convening think tank is its practice of "social experiments": pilot projects in poor areas whose results are evaluated and then offered to government as evidence for national policy. The foundation describes this as one of its three defining features, alongside international exchange and policy research. The pilots are deliberately practical — testing whether a nutrition supplement, a village kindergarten or a parenting programme actually improves children's lives, at a cost the state could afford to scale.

The approach produced one of CDRF's most influential results in school nutrition. In 2007, Lu Mai and his CDRF colleagues demonstrated in a set of pilot schools in rural China that when children were given good nutrition, their school performance rose markedly within months. Stanford's Rural Education Action Program, which built its research agenda on that breakthrough, credits the CDRF demonstration as the inspiration for its school nutrition projects from 2008 onwards — work that contributed to the policy environment in which China adopted a national nutritious school lunch programme. The episode captures the foundation's method: a small, well-documented pilot, rigorously observed, can move national policy.

Child Development and China REACH

Child development in poor rural areas became the foundation's signature social programme. CDRF designed an integrated support model for disadvantaged young children combining nutrition for pregnant women and infants with early childhood education in village settings. By October 2010, with support from local authorities, pilots in Ledu County in Qinghai and Xundian County in Yunnan had covered 4,936 pregnant women and infants in a nutrition programme and 2,960 children aged three to five in an early education programme. By September 2011, some 3,578 pregnant women had received micronutrient supplements, 4,617 infants aged 6–24 months had received soy-based supplement sprinkles, 61 "mommy schools" and 211 teaching sites had been set up, and 4,632 young children had gained access to early education from 151 volunteer teachers. Presenting the early results internationally, Lu Mai reported significant falls in anaemia, diarrhoea and fever among infants, and marked improvements in mountain children's cognitive development, problem-solving and social skills.

This work later fed into national policy: China's Children Nutrition Improvement Project in Poverty-stricken Areas, launched in 2012 to provide free nutritional supplements to all children aged 6–24 months in poverty counties, was informed by CDRF's pilot studies under Lu Mai's leadership. The foundation then deepened the science through China REACH — the Rural Education and Child Health project — an international collaboration between Lu Mai's CDRF team and Nobel laureate James J. Heckman's team at the University of Chicago's Center for the Economics of Human Development. China REACH piloted a culturally adapted version of Jamaica's parenting and psychosocial stimulation curriculum with more than 1,500 families of children aged 6 to 36 months in Huachi County, Gansu Province, using a randomised evaluation design finalised in 2014 and baseline data collected in early 2015, with the goal of informing full national scale-up of combined parenting and nutrition programmes.

Research and Publications

Beyond its pilots, CDRF undertakes major commissioned and self-initiated research on economic, social and sustainable-development issues, and supports the DRC's wider research agenda. Its best-known publication achievement remains the China Human Development Report 2005, organised and coordinated under Lu Mai, whose UNDP award recognised its policy analysis and influence. The foundation publishes research reports, forum proceedings and project findings in Chinese and English; its bilingual web presence — the Chinese site and the English portal at cdrf-en.cdrf.org.cn — carries news of its forums, speeches by its leaders and summaries of its programmes, making CDRF one of the more internationally accessible Chinese policy institutions.

Funding for this work comes from donations by Chinese and international enterprises, organisations and individuals. By the foundation's own account, those funds support policy consultations and academic research, facilitate international exchanges and cooperation, organise personnel training, reward individuals who have made outstanding contributions in policy consultation and academic research, and support other public welfare activities consistent with its mission.

Green Development and Wider Agenda

Child development is the foundation's longest-running pilot field, but its stated programme also includes green development among its social pilot areas, and sustainable development among its core research topics. This reflects CDRF's evolution alongside China's policy priorities: as the national agenda has incorporated environmental sustainability and common prosperity alongside growth, the foundation's research and convening have followed. The China Development Forum's recent themes — continuous development, modernisation and shared development — similarly show the foundation framing China's next-stage questions for an international audience, including through newer platforms such as the Forum on Global Action for Shared Development, whose organisation drew on CDRF's experience.

Role and Significance

CDRF occupies an unusual position in China's institutional landscape: a registered public foundation, funded by donations, yet operating under the State Council's own research centre and trusted to organise the country's premier annual dialogue with global business and scholarship. Its influence rests on the combination its official description names — international exchanges, social experiments and policy research. The forum gives it convening power; the pilots give it evidence; the DRC connection gives its proposals a channel to the central leadership. From three staff in 1999 to the organiser of a forum marking its 25th anniversary in 2025, and from village nutrition pilots in Qinghai and Yunnan to a national nutrition programme and a research partnership with a Nobel laureate's centre in Chicago, the China Development Research Foundation demonstrates how a small, well-placed institution can shape both the conversation about China's development and, on occasion, the policies themselves.