About Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS; Chinese: 中国社会科学院) is China's premier national academic research organisation and its leading state think tank for philosophy and the social sciences. It is a ministry-level institution under the State Council, headquartered in Beijing, and it is described in its own English-language materials and in reference works as the country's highest academic institution and most comprehensive research centre in its fields. Its remit covers the language, philosophy, law, economy, religion, ethnicity, archaeology, history and literature of China and of other countries. This profile is about the academy as an institution — its history, structure, research system, publishing and university — rather than about China Social Sciences Net, the online platform associated with it, which is a separate outlet in its own right.

CASS occupies a distinctive place in Chinese public life because it combines three roles that are separated in many other countries. It is a research academy employing thousands of scholars, a graduate-training institution whose school became a university, and an advisory body whose annual forecasts and reports are read by policymakers, journalists and businesses as signals of official thinking. Foreign Policy has described it as the top think tank in Asia, and the University of Pennsylvania's Global Go To Think Tank reporting has ranked it first among Chinese think tanks.

Founding in 1977 and the academy's origins

CASS was founded in May 1977, formally on 7 May 1977. Its own official history states that it replaced the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Reference accounts add that the separation was made under the instruction of Deng Xiaoping, with the aim of promoting the development of philosophy and social sciences after the disruption of the Cultural Revolution period. Hu Qiaomu was the first president accredited to CASS.

The predecessor department, established in 1955 within the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was not a small unit. According to the academy's official history, it was made up of 14 research units: the Institutes of Economics, Philosophy, World Religions, Archaeology, History, Modern History, World History, Literature, Foreign Literature, Linguistics, Law and Nationality Studies, the Institute of World Economy, and the Research Division on Academic Information and Materials. Its staff totalled more than 2,200 people. Those 14 units became the foundation on which the new academy was built, which explains why CASS began life already covering economics, history, archaeology, literature, linguistics, philosophy, religion, law and ethnic studies rather than growing into those fields one by one.

Presidents and leadership succession

The academy's official history lists the succession of presidents plainly. Hu Qiaomu, the founding president from 1977, was followed by Ma Hong, Hu Sheng, Li Tieying, Chen Kuiyuan, Wang Weiguang, Xie Fuzhan and Shi Taifeng. Gao Xiang is named in that same official history as the current president. That sequence matters for readers of CASS output because the presidency is a senior state appointment: several holders have moved between the academy and senior government or party posts, and the president's speeches at the launch of major reports — Xie Fuzhan, for example, speaking as president and editor-in-chief at the release of the economic Blue Book — are part of how the academy's findings are presented to the public.

Expansion from 1977 to the 1980s

The official history records a rapid build-out in the academy's first years. From 1977 to 1981, new institutes and institutions were established in quick succession, including the Institutes of Industrial Economics, Rural Development, Finance and Trade Economics, Journalism — now the Institute of Journalism and Media — Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, Sociology, Population Studies and Ethnic Minority Literature. The Institute of World Politics was amalgamated with the Institute of World Economy to create the Institute of World Economics and Politics. Institutes for American Studies, Japanese Studies and West European Studies — the last now the Institute of European Studies — were also created, and the Institute of Soviet Union and East European Studies, now the Institute of East European, Russian and Central Asian Studies, together with the Institutes of West Asian and African Studies and of Latin American Studies, were incorporated into CASS during the same period.

Since 1981, the history adds, further units have included the Institute of Quantitative and Technical Economics, the Center for Documentation and Information, the Research Center for Chinese Borderland History and Geography, the Institute of Political Science, the Institute of Taiwan Studies and the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies. The pattern is instructive: an initial core inherited from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a first wave adding applied economics, sociology and area studies as China began reform and opening up, and a later wave adding quantitative, policy and regional specialisms.

Structure: academic divisions and research institutes

Reference summaries of the academy's structure differ slightly by date, which itself reflects its scale and periodic reorganisation. As of November 2020, CASS was recorded as having six academic departments or divisions, 42 research institutes, six functional departments, five directly affiliated institutions and three directly affiliated companies. Indiana University's partnership summary similarly describes 41 research institutes under six academic divisions: Literature, History, Economics, Social, Political Studies and Law, International Studies, and Marxist Studies. Earlier descriptions listed five divisions, and other summaries give 35 or 37 institutes, so readers should treat any single count as dated rather than definitive.

What is consistent across those accounts is the breadth. The institutes include, among many others, the Academy of Marxism, the Institutes of Literature, Ethnic Literature, Foreign Literature, Linguistics, Philosophy, World Religions, Archaeology, History, Modern History and World History, Political Science, Ethnology and Anthropology, Sociology, Law, International Law, World Economy and Politics, and Economics. CASS has also been described as having more than 90 research centres, nearly 300 secondary and tertiary disciplines in some Chinese summaries, and, as of 2012, over 3,200 resident scholars. The Institute of Economics, one of its best-documented units, illustrates the depth beneath the academy level: it traces its own origin to a 1929 social survey body, passed through the Academia Sinica and Chinese Academy of Sciences systems, took its present name in 1977, and employed 141 people as of July 2017.

Research role and think-tank function

CASS is charged, in the standard description of its mission, with advancing and innovating in the scientific research of philosophy, social sciences and policies. In practice that means its institutes produce both disciplinary scholarship — archaeological reports, linguistic studies, histories, editions and translations — and policy-oriented research on the economy, society, law and international affairs. Chinese official summaries of the academy's positioning describe three orientations given by the Party Central Committee: a strong position of Marxism, the highest palace of Chinese philosophy and social science research, and an important think tank of the Party Central Committee and the State Council.

For outside readers, the think-tank function is most visible in the academy's economic and social forecasting work and in the presence of its scholars in national policy discussion. CASS economists such as Cai Fang, a former vice president, have been central public voices on demography, employment and growth, and academy experts are listed among the main contributors to the high-level economic seminars at which China's top decision-makers are briefed. That advisory role sits alongside, and is fed by, the disciplinary research: the same institution that excavates and edits also models and forecasts.

Publishing: presses, journals and the Blue Book series

Publishing is a major part of the academy, not an afterthought. The China Social Sciences Press was established in June 1978 under the auspices of CASS — the official history gives 14 June 1978 for the publishing house — and it has published over 8,000 books since its inception. The Social Sciences in China Press was created in the same founding period, from 1977 to 1981, and the academy also has the Social Sciences Academic Press, the publisher most closely associated with its yearbook series. Its journals include subject journals across its institutes, and its publications pages list journals such as the CASS Journal of Political Science alongside its book output.

The best-known publishing product is the Blue Book series of annual analysis-and-forecast reports. Examples documented on the academy's own English pages include the Blue Book on China's Society: Analysis and Forecast, prepared by a research group drawing on government statistics and social surveys and organised by the Institute of Sociology; the Blue Book of China's Economy, whose 2021 edition covered fiscal and taxation analysis, monetary policy and financial markets, the industrial economy, investment, consumption and foreign trade, and employment and income distribution, and forecast growth of 2.2 per cent for 2020 and about 7.8 per cent for 2021; the 2023 economic Blue Book, which projected growth of around 5.1 per cent for 2023; and newer titles such as Analysis and Forecast of China's Digital Economic Situation, whose first edition in 2021 calculated the digital economy at over RMB 19 trillion in 2020, about 18.8 per cent of GDP. A study of Chinese Blue Books notes that the Social Sciences Academic Press published over 3,000 blue books from 1996 to 2019, accounting for nearly half of that market, drawing on the academy's expert resources. The academy's lifetime output, as summarised in directory descriptions, runs to thousands of academic works, tens of thousands of papers and thousands of research reports.

Education: from graduate school to university

CASS entered education almost immediately. Its Graduate School was founded in 1978, approved by top leaders including Deng Xiaoping and Ye Jianying — the signing is dated 21 August 1978 — and it is described as the first graduate school in China devoted to humanities and social sciences and one of the earliest graduate schools in the country. Its original purpose was to build a prospective research faculty incubator, supplying qualified researchers to the academy itself, and a high percentage of its graduates entered government and research organisations. Summaries of the school record 16 first-level disciplines for doctoral degrees and 17 for master's degrees at one stage, and, by February 2020, 5,496 doctoral degrees and 12,107 master's degrees conferred.

In May 2017 the Graduate School was reconstructed as the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (UCASS), integrating the China Youth University of Political Studies' undergraduate resources. The university held its unveiling in September 2017, welcoming its first 392 undergraduates in seven majors in four schools covering Marxism, humanities, economics and international relations, on a campus in Beijing's Fangshan district. Later summaries describe UCASS with 13 or 14 schools and 39 departments, offering bachelor's, master's, professional master's and doctoral programmes taught by CASS members and researchers. The university is therefore the teaching arm of the academy, not a separate institution that merely shares its name.

Place in Beijing and how to read its output

CASS is headquartered in Beijing; its English site gives its address as No. 5 Jianguomennei Street, Beijing 100732, and individual institutes have their own Beijing addresses, such as the Institute of Economics at No. 2 Yuetan North Street in Xicheng District. Its location, ministry-level status and State Council parentage place it inside China's policy system rather than at arm's length from it, and readers use its output accordingly: a CASS Blue Book forecast is treated as a closely watched, quasi-official reading of the economy, while an institute monograph is treated as disciplinary scholarship from the national academy for its field.

For the purposes of this directory, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is recorded as a Beijing-based national research academy and think tank for philosophy and the social sciences, founded on 7 May 1977, operating dozens of research institutes under six academic divisions, publishing through the China Social Sciences Press, the Social Sciences in China Press and the Social Sciences Academic Press, issuing the Blue Book annual report series, and educating students through the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Its official English-language presence is provided through the CASS English pages hosted on the China Social Sciences Net domain, but the academy itself — the institution profiled here — is the research body, not the website.