About China Institute for Reform and Development

China Institute for Reform and Development

The China Institute for Reform and Development (CIRD, 中国(海南)改革发展研究院) is a public, non-profit research institution in Haikou, the capital of Hainan Province in southern China, established on 1 November 1991 to specialise in reform and development policy research. It works under the guideline of basing itself in Hainan, facing the whole country and marching towards the world, and it has been led since its founding by its president, Chi Fulin, who had helped prepare the establishment of Hainan Province. Soon after its founding, CIRD chose to become self-financing and to withdraw from the government financial establishment — a model that Xinhua's Outlook Weekly described as making it the first independent think tank among China's provincial social academies. It has submitted more than 130 sets of reform policy and legislation recommendations to central government departments, held more than 400 seminars including dozens of international forums on China's reform, and in 2001 became the intellectual support institution for the first Boao Forum for Asia annual conference. In 2013 and 2014 it was ranked China's most influential non-governmental think tank. Its official website is chinareform.org. CIRD is a reform-policy institute in Hainan and is distinct from similarly named reform publications and media outlets.

Established in Haikou on 1 November 1991

CIRD's founding date, 1 November 1991, is consistently recorded in its own institutional introductions and was marked publicly at its 30th anniversary in 2021, when a Hainan government report noted that the institute had been established on that day in Hainan Province, the country's largest special economic zone. Hainan had become a province and a special economic zone only in 1988, and Chi Fulin had been involved in preparing the province's establishment before becoming CIRD's founding president — a post he still held at the 30th anniversary. The institute describes itself as a public and non-profit research institution mainly specialising in reform and development policy research, with the mission of facilitating China's economic reform and development policy decision-making. Reviewing the institute's first 30 years in September 2021, Chi summarised its constants: taking the making of reform suggestions as its own responsibility, adhering to the purpose of basing itself on Hainan while facing the whole country and going to the world, and keeping the institutional characteristics of being network-type, internationalised and independent.

The Self-Financing, Independent Model

What set CIRD apart from other provincial research bodies was an early organisational choice. Soon after its founding, the institute chose to become self-financing and to step out of the government financial establishment, supporting itself through its research work rather than a guaranteed state budget line. A detailed institutional introduction prepared for a Heidelberg audience records that CIRD practises a system of vesting full responsibility in the president under the leadership of a board of directors, and adheres to an operating mechanism characterised as a small organisation with a large network: the introduction noted an institute of only about 50 people on the island of Hainan pursuing a research-organising model described as having a government background, a non-governmental organisation, an institutional legal person and management like an enterprise. Outlook Weekly, published by Xinhua, judged that this made CIRD the first independent think tank among all the provincial social academies in China. In the Center for China and Globalization's taxonomy of Chinese think tanks, CIRD is listed among the non-enterprise private entity think tanks, and among the non-governmental think tanks whose development began in the reform era.

Chi Fulin, Founding President

Chi Fulin is inseparable from CIRD's identity. Chinese media profiles trace a career that moved from military officer to government official to scholar: he first arrived in Hainan at the end of 1987, as the island was being prepared for provincial status, recalling that on arrival in Haikou he found not a single traffic light and traffic in disorder — a measure of how undeveloped the future special economic zone then was. From that starting point he helped prepare the establishment of Hainan Province and then, in 1991, founded CIRD and became its president. Profiles describe him as known for research on China's economic system reform, presiding over multiple research programmes, and as an iconic figure in the promotion of China's reform who remains deeply engaged in both national reform questions and the development of the Hainan Special Economic Zone. In 2021 the institute published the Selected Works of Chi Fulin's Reform Research, a collection of more than 1.5 million characters in three volumes bringing together his theoretical research and suggestions on reform theory and economic system reform, on expanding opening-up and on social policy from the 1980s onwards — an unusually complete record of one reform economist's work across the whole reform era.

Reform Recommendations to the Central Government

CIRD's core business is advice. Its institutional introductions record that, over its first 18 years, it submitted more than 130 sets of reform policy and legislation recommendation reports to relevant departments of the central government — a figure carried into the candidate record for the institute as its cumulative record of formal submissions. Its method, as described at its 30th anniversary, has been to track and study the major hot spots and difficult issues in the reform process as reform and opening-up deepened, to hold to the reform direction of the socialist market economy, and to put forward timely policy and action suggestions, a considerable number of which, scholars noted at the anniversary, were adopted by central and local decision-makers, with others valued for being forward-looking and strategic. Song Xiaowu, chairman of the academic committee of the China Economic System Reform Research Association, assessed that the institute had formed its own unique role and advantages by consistently embodying that approach at each stage of China's reform. Wei Liqun, former director of the Research Office of the State Council, summarised its 30 years as three decades of contributions to serving the Party and the state in reform and opening-up decisions, and to serving Hainan's own reform and development.

Seminars and the China Reform International Forum

Convening is the institute's second instrument. A Hainan government report on its 30th anniversary recorded that, as of August 2021, CIRD had held a total of 413 seminars, including 86 international forums about China's reform and opening-up — consistent with the candidate record of over 400 seminars, including dozens of international forums on China's reform, by 2021. The flagship gathering is the China Reform International Forum: reporting on the 87th forum, held in 2021 under the theme of building a new development pattern for China and the world, shows Chi using the occasion to argue for promoting that new pattern through a high level of opening-up, with proposals on foreign investment treatment, services opening and digital trade. The institute's international seminar tradition began almost immediately: Chi has recalled that in December 1991, weeks after CIRD's founding, it held an international seminar on China's financial system reform attended by more than 100 officials and financial experts from countries including the United Kingdom, Japan and Thailand, together with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations Development Programme, to discuss the status and role of central banks and the tools of monetary policy — which he described as the first meeting to discuss reform of the central bank system since China's reform and opening-up began.

Intellectual Support for the Boao Forum for Asia

CIRD's convening role reached its widest audience through the Boao Forum for Asia, the annual conference held at Boao in Hainan that has become one of Asia's best-known economic gatherings. In 2001 CIRD became the intellectual support institution for the first Boao Forum for Asia annual conference — that is, the Hainan institute that had spent a decade studying reform provided research support to the new forum being launched in its home province. The connection was natural: Boao gave Hainan a permanent place in regional economic diplomacy, and CIRD's network of reform researchers, its seminar experience and its international contacts were among the local assets on which the forum could draw. The role is a standard part of the institute's recorded history and illustrates its broader function as Hainan's bridge between provincial development questions and national and international policy debate.

Recognition as China's Most Influential Non-Governmental Think Tank

CIRD's standing has been recognised in Chinese think tank evaluations. Its institutional summary, carried by the PreventionWeb knowledge platform, records that CIRD was ranked as the most influential Chinese non-governmental think tank, and tenth among Chinese think tanks by comprehensive influence, for two consecutive years in 2013 and 2014. At its 30th anniversary, Wei Liqun assessed that the institute had been built into a Chinese reform think tank with wide industry visibility, social popularity and international visibility, and with extensive social, decision-making, academic and international influence, and had become a leader in the development of the new type of think tank in China. That a self-financing institute of a few dozen people, based on an island province far from Beijing, could hold that position is the central fact of CIRD's reputation, and it rests on the longevity and adoption record of its reform recommendations rather than on scale.

Research on the Hainan Free Trade Port

In its recent work, CIRD's Hainan base and its national reform agenda have converged on a single project: the Hainan Free Trade Port, the island-wide free trade port China is building as its largest special economic zone's next stage. Chi Fulin has argued that the port should take the initiative to align with high-level international economic and trade rules, strengthen the foundational position of competition policy, refine national treatment standards before and after access, and formulate high standards for intellectual property protection and environmental protection. He has proposed making Hainan a meeting point between the two major markets of China and ASEAN, using the port's geographical and policy advantages to attract global capital, talent and technology, building connections in fields such as duty-free shopping with Hong Kong, medical and health cooperation, and service industry standards, and using the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership framework to expand regional cooperation. At the 30th anniversary the institute published its Hainan Free Trade Port Proposal, collecting its suggestions at the successive historical nodes of the special economic zone's establishment and development, which reviewers described as strategic, forward-looking and operational. CIRD, the Hainan government noted in 2021, had by then devoted some 30 years to researching what became the free trade port.

International Exchanges

International cooperation is built into CIRD's self-description, and Chi Fulin has described its exchanges as passing through three stages across its first 30 years, mirroring the course of China's own opening. He has said the institute established academic exchange relations with international institutions such as the World Bank and the European Union, and with research institutions in more than 30 countries including the United Kingdom, the United States and India. Its first-decade activity already included the 1991 central bank seminar with the World Bank, IMF and UNDP present, and its anniversary forum in 2021 brought together officials, academics and business people from more than a dozen countries in Haikou, China's southernmost provincial capital, for international discussion. Asked how think tanks can make the world understand China, Chi presented CIRD's 30 years of international exchange as an epitome of China's reform and opening-up itself — a framing that captures the institute's dual role as a student of reform at home and an explainer of it abroad.

Publications, Anniversary Works and Access

CIRD marked its 30th anniversary in September 2021 with three academic publications launched at a Beijing press conference co-sponsored with the China Social Sciences Publishing House: Suggestions for Reform — 30 Years of Pursuit and Dedication of the China Reform Institute, gathering the institute's ideological and academic achievements and the record of its reform suggestions; the Hainan Free Trade Port Proposal; and the three-volume Selected Works of Chi Fulin's Reform Research. An earlier media-eye view, The Road to China's Reform Think Tank, edited by China Economic Times, had already documented the institute at its 20th anniversary, reflecting a long relationship between the institute and China's economic press. CIRD is based in Haikou, Hainan, and its official website is chinareform.org. For readers tracing how China's reform policies have been debated and proposed outside the central ministries — by a small, self-financing, network-based institute that chose independence in 1991 and has advised on reform, Hainan's development and the free trade port ever since — CIRD is one of the essential institutions to know.