About China Social Sciences Today

China Social Sciences Today

China Social Sciences Today (Chinese: 中国社会科学报; pinyin: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Bao) is a Chinese-language academic newspaper published in Beijing by Social Sciences in China Press under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), China's top research institution for philosophy and the social sciences. It is not a general newspaper that happens to cover universities: it is a large-format theory and scholarship paper produced inside the national academy system, aimed at researchers and educated readers nationwide. Its subject is scholarship itself — academic conferences, research findings and debates across philosophy, economics, history, law, literature and international studies.

Launch in 2009

The paper was formally launched on 1 July 2009, with an unveiling ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. That venue and date matter to understanding what the paper is. A commercial title launches in a market; this title was presented, at the state's principal ceremonial hall, as a national institution — a newspaper intended to give China's philosophy and social-science community a shared national platform of its own. Before 2009, that role had been filled at a comprehensive level only by a regional paper, Shanghai's Social Sciences News, published by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences since 1985. The arrival of a CASS newspaper in Beijing created, for the first time, a national academic newspaper backed by the country's leading academy.

An English-language electronic edition followed in the United States in 2015, extending the title beyond its Chinese print readership. By that point the paper's English presence was already visible internationally through the academy's English website, discussed below, where articles sourced to the paper circulate to foreign scholars, journalists and students of China.

The publisher: Social Sciences in China Press

The publisher, Social Sciences in China Press, is the academic news and publishing agency affiliated to CASS. CASS's own institutional history lists the press among the new institutions created in the academy's first years, between 1977 and 1981, alongside new research institutes in fields such as industrial economics, sociology and journalism. The press is best known internationally for the journal Social Sciences in China (中国社会科学), established in 1980. The Chinese edition of that journal, published by the press on a monthly basis, is regarded as a top journal in China, and its English edition — published quarterly by Routledge — is notable as the first social science journal in English published in mainland China and remains a key platform for introducing Chinese scholarship to global audiences.

A newspaper sits differently within that portfolio from a journal. Journals carry peer-reviewed research on a monthly or quarterly rhythm; a newspaper can report a conference the following week, interview a scholar about a new finding, and host argument between disciplines while the argument is still live. China Social Sciences Today is the fast, public-facing layer of the same publishing house whose journal represents the slower, archival layer of Chinese social-science scholarship.

The academy behind the paper: CASS

CASS is a state research institute and think tank of the People's Republic of China, a ministry-level institution under the State Council, and is considered the country's top academic institution for philosophy and social sciences research. It was founded in May 1977 — its own history dates its formal establishment to that month, replacing the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. That predecessor department, established in 1955, was made up of 14 research units covering economics, philosophy, world religions, archaeology, history, modern history, world history, literature, foreign literature, linguistics, law, nationality studies and world economy, with a staff of more than 2,200. CASS was established by splitting that department from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with the aim of promoting the development of philosophy and social sciences under the instruction of Deng Xiaoping; its first president was Hu Qiaomu.

Between 1977 and 1981 the academy expanded quickly, adding institutes of industrial economics, rural development, finance and trade economics, journalism, sociology, population studies and ethnic minority literature, as well as area-studies institutes for American, Japanese, European, East European, Russian, Central Asian, West Asian, African and Latin American studies. The scale that resulted explains the newspaper's breadth. As of November 2020, CASS had six academic departments and 42 research institutes, together with functional departments and directly affiliated institutions; as of 2012 it had over 3,200 resident scholars. Its research objects span the language, philosophy, law, economy, religion, ethnicity, archaeology, history and literature of China and other countries. A newspaper drawing on that institution is not short of contributors or subjects.

Coverage and disciplines

The candidate profile of the paper describes a large-format theory and scholarship paper reporting academic conferences, research findings and debates across philosophy, economics, history, law, literature and international studies — and the academy's English output sourced to the paper bears that range out. Articles credited to Chinese Social Sciences Today on the academy's English site include reporting of an academic conference marking the fortieth anniversary of CASS's Institute of Sociology, coverage of awards for the top articles published in Social Sciences in China, and analysis of China's role in United Nations agenda-setting sourced to the paper in 2015. Interviews are a characteristic form: the paper's reporters interview scholars at length — a CASS reporter's interview with a Peking University comparative-literature professor on Chinese and Western cultures, for example, ranges across Sinology, philosophy, history, archaeology, literature and linguistics in a single conversation.

That breadth is the point of a comprehensive academic newspaper. A specialist journal speaks to one discipline; this paper's readers are expected to follow argument across disciplines, so that an economist encounters current historical research and a historian encounters current economic debate in the same title.

Chinese Social Sciences Net and the English readership

The paper's digital counterpart in English is Chinese Social Sciences Net, at english.cssn.cn, which carries articles sourced to Chinese Social Sciences Today across history, archaeology, literature, economics, sociology and other fields. Its research pages organise that material by discipline — sociology and economics features sit alongside work on reshaping academic structures, interdisciplinary integration and ancient history — giving non-Chinese readers a structured entry point into debates that originally appeared for a domestic scholarly audience. The English site therefore functions as a translation and selection layer over the newspaper: not the whole paper, but a continuing sample of its reporting and interviews, attributed to the paper by name and date.

For international researchers, that sourcing matters. When an English article is credited to Chinese Social Sciences Today, the reader can tell that the argument began as a contribution to China's domestic academic conversation, in the academy's own newspaper, rather than as material written primarily for foreign consumption.

Readership and role

The paper is aimed at researchers and educated readers nationwide. Its practical readership is the world that produces and uses Chinese social-science research: academy and university scholars, graduate students, research administrators, journal editors and policy readers who follow academic debate. Within that world it performs three functions at once. It is a news service, reporting conferences, appointments, projects and findings. It is a forum, carrying the debates through which disciplines argue about direction and method. And it is a showcase, presenting the academy's and the wider community's work to readers — including, through the English electronic edition and website, readers outside China.

Place among China's academic publications

China has many academic journals — CASS alone has been described as managing scores of them, covering most of the social sciences — but very few academic newspapers. The newspaper form gives China Social Sciences Today a distinct position: more topical and argumentative than a journal, more scholarly and specialised than a general daily. Its launch in 2009 also completed a geographical shift in that small field, from a landscape in which the only comprehensive humanities and social-sciences newspaper was a Shanghai academy title founded in 1985 to one led by a national title from the Beijing academy. The two papers are distinct publications of distinct academies, and should not be confused with each other — or with the journal Social Sciences in China, the press's older flagship periodical.

Why the paper is cited

Foreign scholars and journalists cite the paper because it is a direct source for how Chinese academics present their own research and disputes. Academic CVs record interviews given to Chinese Social Sciences Today — on subjects such as the UN Security Council in world politics — and articles originating in the paper are republished or cited by institutions such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace with the source line preserved. Obituaries and profiles of Chinese scholars in international media likewise draw on its English reporting. For a directory reader, the essential facts are its identity and provenance: a Beijing academic newspaper, launched on 1 July 2009, published by Social Sciences in China Press under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, reporting scholarship across the humanities and social sciences for a national research readership, with an English presence through Chinese Social Sciences Net and the English electronic edition launched in the United States in 2015.