About China Instrument and Control Society

China Instrument and Control Society

The China Instrument and Control Society (中国仪器仪表学会) — also rendered in English as the Chinese Society for Instrumentation, the China Instrumentation Society, and in its own current English usage the China Instrument and Control Society (CIS or CICS) — is China's national learned society for instrumentation, measurement and control engineering, founded on 29 March 1979 and based in Beijing. A non-profit academic organisation affiliated with the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), it is described by its international partners as the leading academic organisation in measurement, instrumentation, control and automation in China. Its recorded scale is substantial: 42,000 individual members, 2,100 group members, 41 technical divisions, 29 local sections and 10 specialised working committees. The Society publishes six academic and technical journals on measurement, instrumentation and control, confers the CIS Science and Technology Award, and has hosted MICONEX, the International Conference and Fair for Measurement, Instrumentation and Automation, annually since 1983. Located in the capital, it describes its bridging role plainly: it is a bridge between Chinese governmental administrations, industries, scientists, engineers, researchers and manufacturers — the connective institution of the profession that builds the sensors, analysers and control systems underpinning Chinese manufacturing and scientific research.

Instrumentation is the least visible of the great engineering disciplines and one of the most consequential: nothing in modern industry or science is made, tested or controlled without being measured first. The Society's field — instrument science and technology — is a recognised first-level academic discipline in China, with its own degree committees and teaching steering committees, and the Society works alongside those academic structures as the profession's national body. Its English names vary across sources because the Chinese name admits several faithful translations; the institution is one, and this profile uses China Instrument and Control Society throughout, the form in its own English web presence at en.cis.org.cn.

Founded in 1979

The Society was founded on 29 March 1979 — the precise date is recorded in the award citations of the Society's own Science and Technology Award announcements — and it was formerly known in English as the China Instrument Society. The founding fell in the first spring of China's reform and opening-up, when the country's instrument industry, like the rest of its industrial base, was being rebuilt and reconnected to world technology. A national society for the field gave the rebuilt industry a professional commons: a place where the staff of the great instrument research institutes, the university departments and the manufacturers could meet as one profession. Registration as an academic, public non-profit organisation, made up of professionals in measurement and control and instrumentation science and technology participating voluntarily, gives the Society its standing as, in its own words, "an important voice on topics related to the development of measurement and control and instrumentation science and technology" in China.

Scale: members, divisions and sections

The figures published for the Society by its partner the International Society of Automation (ISA) give its working anatomy: 42,000 individual members and 2,100 group members — the group membership enrolling the institutes, universities and companies of the sector — organised in 41 technical divisions covering the specialties of instrumentation and control, 29 local sections serving members by region, and 10 specialised working or ad hoc committees carrying cross-cutting functions. The Society publishes six academic and technical journals across measurement, instrumentation and control. Figures of this kind are snapshots from the early 2010s partnership literature, but the structure they describe — dozens of technical divisions, a nationwide section network, a multi-journal publishing programme — is the Society's enduring form, and its more recent activity, from the World Sensors Summit to its engineering-competency programmes, shows the same machinery in operation.

MICONEX: the fair the Society built

The Society's most public institution is MICONEX, the multinational — later styled international — conference and fair for measurement, instrumentation and automation, which it has hosted annually since 1983. Few learned societies anywhere own an exhibition of this longevity. The fair grew with China's instrument industry: accounts of its twentieth edition, held in 2009 alongside the International Conference on Optical Instrument and Technology, record around 600 manufacturers and traders from 21 countries and regions and an exhibition area of 25,000 square metres, with the fair alternating between Beijing and Shanghai. Later editions kept the pattern: the 24th MICONEX opened in Beijing in August 2013 and the 26th in Chongqing in September 2015, each combined with award ceremonies and academic conferences. A retrospective published at the 34th edition records that MICONEX, founded in 1983, had by then held 33 sessions, attracting thousands of companies from more than 40 countries and regions, tens of thousands of technology workers and over 600,000 visitors across its history — "one of the oldest and most influential professional brand exhibitions in the industry", accompanying the growth of China's instrumentation industry for over forty years. The Society's 2025 academic conference in Changsha was again held alongside MICONEX, keeping the pairing of scholarship and trade fair that has defined the event since the 1980s.

The academic annual conference and the 40th anniversary

The Society's scholarly flagship is its academic annual conference. The 2019 conference, held at the Beijing Friendship Hotel on 29–30 March 2019, coincided with the Society's 40th anniversary and drew more than 600 delegates from academia and industry across eleven sub-forums, ranging — in the Society's directory record — over instruments for space exploration, precision instruments and intelligent manufacturing, electronic measurement and analytical instrumentation. The meeting was organised by the Society with the State Council degree committee's instrument science and technology discipline appraisal group, the Ministry of Education's instrumentation teaching steering committee, and a consortium of the field's leading universities — Tsinghua, Tianjin, Harbin Institute of Technology, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing University of Information Science and Technology, Chongqing University, Hangzhou Dianzi University and Zhejiang University — together with the state key laboratories of precision measurement technology and instruments and of industrial control technology, and industrial institutes and companies.

The conference theme addressed measurement and instrumentation in an era of quantification and intelligence. Its timing gave it a scientific charge: in 2018 the international metrology community had adopted the revision of the International System of Units, redefining the kilogram and other units on fundamental constants, and the Society's president argued that the future would demand deep discussion of intelligent application scenarios, the quantified transformation of measurement and sensing, the basic research direction of the instrumentation discipline, and its technological innovation and industrial path. The honorary president, Li Tianchu of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the National Institute of Metrology, gave a keynote report, keeping the Society's metrology roots — measurement traceable to national standards — at the centre of its fortieth-anniversary programme.

Leadership: You Zheng and the university connection

In 2019 the Society's president was You Zheng, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a vice-president of Tsinghua University — a pairing that reflects the Society's close ties to the university instrumentation community. You joined Tsinghua's faculty in 1992, became a professor in 1994 and was a visiting professor at the University of Surrey from 1998 to 2000. His research covers microsystems based on micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), micro-nano satellite technology and micro-nano technology for measurement and instruments. At the 2019 conference he delivered the keynote "Intelligent manufacturing and intelligent microsystems", arguing that intelligent micro-system technology is a strategic technology leading the future — an important part of intelligent manufacturing that will push human society into the era of intelligence. Tsinghua's own listings style him Chairman of the China Instrument and Control Society and, additionally, President of the Chinese Society of Micro-Nano Technology, an overlap typical of the small, senior community that leads China's instrument field. His scholarly advocacy for intelligent sensors — urging that China seize the intelligent era's opportunity to raise its sensor research and industrialisation — is the Society's agenda stated at the level of national strategy.

The Science and Technology Award

The Society confers the CIS Science and Technology Award, established by the National Office for Science and Technology Awards and the Ministry of Science and Technology, and described by recipients as highly prestigious and influential. The award is presented at MICONEX: in 2013, 29 products won in its Excellent Product category at the Beijing fair, among them Yokogawa's CENTUM VP integrated production control system — one of only two non-Chinese companies so honoured that year — and in 2015 Yokogawa China received the award at the Chongqing fair for an intelligent manufacturing technology solution for the petrochemical industry, the sole subsidiary of an overseas-based company to receive the honour that year. An award that foreign multinationals record in their own corporate histories is functioning as the Chinese instrument industry's recognised mark of excellence, and its administration is one of the Society's standing services to the sector.

International partnerships and summits

The Society's international relationships are long-standing. It has maintained a bilateral relationship with the International Society of Automation since 1980, the two bodies regularly supporting and participating in each other's events, and on 12 September 2013 ISA signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with the Society formally declaring joint intentions, including reciprocal membership enabling members of each association to join the other at a discount. The Society also co-organises global-facing events on Chinese soil: the World Sensors Summit, whose 2023 plenary session was held in Zhengzhou on 5 November 2023, was sponsored by the Henan Provincial People's Government and CAST and organised by a consortium including the China Instrument and Control Society. Sensors — the input layer of every control system — have become the Society's most internationally visible theme, aligning its programme with the technology its president's own research addresses.

Talent development and standards work

Through its specialist committees, the Society undertakes standards work, exhibitions and the development of the profession's people. Its Talent Development Department runs the Society's engineering competency evaluation programme: on 14 February 2025 its Engineering Competency Evaluation Project working conference and examiner training seminar convened at Xiamen, hosted with Xiamen Yudian Temperature Control Technology, bringing nearly fifty experts from across the nation to review industry achievements, examine trends in technological innovation and plan the programme's future — the Society's department director describing its commitment to providing learning and networking opportunities that raise the sector's overall work standards. Competency evaluation — certifying what practising engineers can demonstrably do — is among the most practical services a modern learned society can sell to its industry, and the Society operates it as a standing national programme. Alongside it, the Society's conferences continue to serve talent formation directly: its 2025 academic conference, held in Changsha on 12–15 August 2025 and hosted by the National University of Defense Technology, was organised with the discipline's degree committee and teaching steering committee and paired with the National Forum of Deans in Instrument Science and Technology, joining researchers, teachers and industry in one programme.

Why the Society matters

The China Instrument and Control Society matters because measurement is the precondition of everything its country's industry does, and this Society is that discipline's national institution. Founded on 29 March 1979, grown to tens of thousands of members in 41 technical divisions and 29 local sections, publisher of six journals, owner since 1983 of MICONEX, one of China's oldest professional exhibitions, grantor of a science and technology award recognised by domestic and foreign industry alike, partner of the International Society of Automation since 1980 and co-organiser of the World Sensors Summit, it binds together the government, institutes, universities and manufacturers of Chinese instrumentation. For the record: 中国仪器仪表学会, founded 29 March 1979, Beijing, affiliated with CAST, president in 2019 You Zheng of Tsinghua University, English site en.cis.org.cn — with the caution that its English name legitimately varies between China Instrument and Control Society, Chinese Society for Instrumentation and China Instrumentation Society across sources, all denoting the same body.