About Chinese Academy of Engineering

Chinese Academy of Engineering

Overview and Mandate

The Chinese Academy of Engineering, known in Chinese as Zhongguo Gongchengyuan, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for engineering. Established on 3 June 1994 as an institution of the State Council and headquartered in Beijing, it is the country's highest honorary and advisory academic institution in engineering and technological sciences. Together with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which covers the natural sciences, it forms the pair of national academies commonly referred to in China as the 'two academies'. Where CAS operates laboratories, the Academy of Engineering is primarily a body of elected experts: its authority rests on the collective standing of its academicians and on the strategic studies they produce for the state.

As an information and advisory agency, the academy conducts strategic studies on major engineering and technology questions, advises central and local governments, organises academic exchange, and publishes its research and news in Chinese and English through cae.cn and en.cae.cn. Its studies address the engineering systems on which China's economy depends — energy, transport, manufacturing, water, construction, agriculture, medicine and information technology — and its recommendations are a recognised input to national planning. For a directory of information institutions, CAE matters because its reports and announcements are authoritative signals of how China's engineering establishment assesses major projects and technologies.

Origins and Founding in 1994

The academy was created after a long advocacy campaign within China's engineering community. In the summer of 1982, senior engineers including Zhang Guangdou, Wu Zhonghua, Luo Peilin and Shi Changxu proposed the establishment of a Chinese academy of engineering and technology; a decade later, in the spring of 1992, Zhang Guangdou, Wang Daheng, Zhang Wei, Hou Xianglin, Luo Peilin and Shi Changxu renewed the proposal. In 1993 the State Council decided both to rename the members of the academic divisions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as academicians and to establish a separate Chinese Academy of Engineering.

The academy was formally established in 1994, and in May of that year the State Council announced its first cohort of 96 academicians. Thirty of those founding members were also academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, drawn in part from that academy's technical sciences division, which is why a small group of senior figures historically held membership of both academies. Zhu Guangya served as the first president, from 1994 to 1998. The founding gave engineering, for the first time, an honours and advisory institution of equal formal standing to the academy for the natural sciences.

Membership and the Academician Title

Membership of the Chinese Academy of Engineering is the highest academic title in engineering science and technology in China. It is a lifelong honour, conferred on senior engineers, professors and other specialists who hold Chinese citizenship — including those residing in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and overseas — and who have made significant and creative achievements and major contributions in engineering and technological sciences. The academy consists of members, senior members and foreign members, each recognised for their respective field of engineering.

Elections of new members are held every two years, in odd-numbered years under the academy's rules. The number to be elected each time is decided by the academy's presidium; examinations and elections are conducted within each academic division, voting is anonymous, and results are examined and validated by the governing board. Recent elections illustrate the scale of the process: 84 new academicians were elected in 2021 and 74 in 2023. Candidates may be nominated by existing academicians or by the China Association for Science and Technology, and charter revisions adopted in 2014 disqualified officials above a certain civil-service rank from eligibility and ended nominations from government departments, strengthening the academic character of the title.

Academic Divisions

The academy's members are organised into nine academic divisions that mirror the structure of Chinese engineering. Reference listings give the divisions as Mechanical and Vehicle Engineering; Information and Electronic Engineering; Chemical, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering; Energy and Mining Engineering; Civil and Hydraulic Engineering and Architecture; Light Industry and Environmental Engineering (listed in some sources as Environment and Light and Textile Industries); Agriculture; Medicine and Health; and Engineering Management. The Engineering Management division, proposed in 2000, recognises leaders who have ensured the success of major programmes or who have high academic achievement in engineering management put into practice, including an emerging-crosscutting category added in recent election cycles.

Membership totals have grown steadily with China's engineering expansion. As of January 2020 the academy had 920 Chinese members and 93 foreign members; later listings record more than 1,000 living members in total, with the largest divisions — Information and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical and Vehicle Engineering, Energy and Mining Engineering and Medicine and Health — each holding well over a hundred members. The General Assembly of the academy, which brings the membership together, is its highest decision-making body and is held in the first week of June every two years, coinciding with the academy's major academic conferences.

Strategic Studies and Advisory Work

The academy's core working method is the strategic study: a structured investigation, led by academicians and drawing on experts across universities, institutes and industry, into a major question of engineering or technology policy. CAE conducts such studies on questions assigned by the state as well as topics it selects itself, and it advises both central government and local governments on request. Topics over the years have ranged across national energy strategy, major water and transport projects, manufacturing upgrading, food security and public-health engineering — the fields covered by its nine divisions.

This advisory output is the academy's principal information product. Study results are delivered as reports and recommendations to government, and many are subsequently published, summarised on the academy's websites or presented at its conferences, making them available to researchers, companies and journalists. Because academicians are drawn from the leadership of China's largest engineering programmes, CAE studies carry unusual weight: they represent a consensus view of the senior engineering profession rather than the position of a single ministry or company, and foreign analysts read them closely for indications of China's technology priorities.

Publications and Information Services

The academy publishes its research and news in Chinese through cae.cn and in English through en.cae.cn, covering election results, strategic-study announcements, academician activities, academic conferences and obituaries and honours within the engineering community. Its divisions and study teams issue reports and proceedings, and the academy is associated with engineering publishing in China, including journals that carry academician-led research and the findings of its strategic studies for a professional readership.

For the information ecosystem, CAE's most consequential publications are often its collective statements: the biennial election lists that define the senior engineering profession, the published conclusions of major strategic studies, and the proceedings of its General Assembly conferences. These documents are reference points for universities appointing leaders, companies assessing technology direction and media identifying authoritative engineering voices. The academy's English-language service extends this reference function internationally, presenting Chinese engineering priorities and achievements to foreign governments, professional societies and researchers in a form they can cite directly.

Leadership and Presidents

The academy is led by a president elected from its membership, supported by vice-presidents and a presidium, with the General Assembly as the highest decision-making body. The list of presidents records Zhu Guangya (1994–1998), Song Jian (1998–2002), Xu Kuangdi (2002–2010) and Zhou Ji (2010–2018), followed by Li Xiaohong from 2018; recent reference listings also record Zhang Yuzhuo as president from 2026, reflecting the academy's regular leadership rotation. Presidents are typically figures who have combined senior engineering or scientific careers with national administrative experience, which suits an institution that must speak both to the profession and to the State Council.

As an institution of the State Council, the academy operates within the state system while its elections and academic judgements are made by the membership itself. This dual position — state institution, self-governing profession — is the same model used by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and it explains the format of CAE's public information: formal announcements carry governmental weight, while study conclusions are presented as the independent consensus of elected experts. Both registers appear on its Chinese and English websites, and both are treated as authoritative by its audiences.

Relationship with the Chinese Academy of Sciences

CAE and CAS are routinely described together as the 'two academies', and the phrase reflects a genuine institutional pairing. CAS, founded in 1949, covers the natural sciences and operates research institutes; CAE, founded in 1994 partly from CAS's technical sciences community, covers engineering and technological sciences and operates primarily through its elected membership. In the academy's first two election cycles, in 1994 and 1995, a group of senior figures held membership of both bodies; accounts of the academies record 34 such dual academicians in total, all elected to CAS before 1994 and then to CAE at its founding, with no new dual memberships created after 1995 because the founding arrangement was not repeated.

The two academies cooperate on national science and technology advice, joint conferences and the public celebration of Chinese research achievement, and their biennial election announcements are released in the same season and covered together by Chinese media. For information users, the distinction matters: a CAS announcement usually reports research produced inside its own institutes, whereas a CAE announcement usually reports the collective judgement of the engineering profession on work done across the whole economy. Together they form the apex of China's official science and engineering information system.

Role as a Knowledge and Information Institution

Within China's knowledge system, the Chinese Academy of Engineering functions as the certifying and convening institution for engineering expertise. It certifies expertise through the academician title, which universities, companies and government bodies treat as the definitive mark of senior engineering standing. It convenes expertise through its divisions, strategic studies and General Assembly conferences. And it communicates expertise through its reports, journals and bilingual websites, which translate the profession's consensus into guidance that planners and the public can use.

The academy has no large laboratory network of its own, and that is precisely what makes its information role distinctive: its product is judgement. When CAE publishes a strategic study on an energy system, a manufacturing technology or a public-health engineering question, the document condenses the experience of the engineers who built China's largest projects into a form usable for decisions. For the WorldNM directory, CAE is therefore profiled as a national advisory and information agency for engineering, headquartered in Beijing and active wherever Chinese engineering decisions are made.

International Engagement

The academy maintains a body of foreign members — more than ninety in 2020 listings and over 120 living foreign members in more recent counts — elected for their standing in world engineering and their connections with China. Foreign membership links CAE to national engineering academies abroad and gives foreign experts a formal channel into Chinese engineering discussions. The academy also takes part in international engineering-academy networks and hosts foreign delegations, conferences and joint studies through its Beijing headquarters.

Through en.cae.cn, the academy presents election results, study summaries and conference news in English, and its academicians participate in international professional societies across all nine divisional fields. This engagement is part of the academy's information function: it benchmarks Chinese engineering against world practice, imports outside assessment of Chinese programmes, and exports the profession's own account of its achievements. For overseas readers, CAE's English output is one of the most reliable windows on how China's engineering leadership understands its own priorities and capabilities.