About Development Research Center of the State Council

Development Research Center of the State Council

The Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC, Chinese: 国务院发展研究中心) is a ministerial-level public institution in Beijing that works directly under the State Council, the central government of the People's Republic of China. It is the central government's principal policy research and consulting body on economic and social development. Headquartered at 225 Chaoyangmennei Street in Beijing's Dongcheng District, the DRC conducts follow-up and forward-looking studies of strategic and long-term development issues, advises on mid- and long-term development plans and regional policies, and produces recommendations that feed into some of the most important documents in Chinese public life.

Few think tanks anywhere sit as close to the centre of economic policymaking. The DRC has been involved in many major policy-making processes of the central government, including the formulation of China's five-year plans for national economic and social development and long-term national development programmes. Its advice has been credited with helping to promote the reform and opening-up of the Chinese economy and the establishment of the socialist market economy, and one of its reform blueprints — the "383 Scheme" of 2013 — became one of the most widely discussed policy documents of the Xi Jinping era.

Establishment and status

The DRC was established in 1981, in the early years of China's reform and opening-up, when the leadership needed research capacity able to study the problems of economic transformation systematically rather than through campaign-style mobilisation. It is a comprehensive policy research and consulting institution operating directly under the State Council, and it is an advisory body which recommends policies to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and to the State Council itself.

That dual audience — party and government — explains the range of the centre's work. According to summaries of its official functions, its main tasks include conducting follow-up and advanced studies of strategic and long-term issues concerning economic and social development, offering advice and proposals for mid- and long-term development plans and regional development policies, and participating in development programmes. It analyses the macroeconomic situation in order to advise on the comprehensive application of macroeconomic policies, and it examines industrial economic development and industrial policies, offering proposals concerning industrial structure, investment structure, enterprise organisation and ownership structure, technology selection and innovation.

Research departments and staff

The DRC's headquarters has about 160 researchers, with a considerable number of senior economists among them — a compact staff for an institution of its influence, reflecting a model in which a core of in-house experts draws on a much wider network of specialists. Established within the centre are eight research departments, a General Office, an Academic Committee and a Committee for Assessment of Academic Qualifications. Its departmental structure has included a Department of Development Strategy and Regional Economy and a comprehensive economic research function, alongside departments covering the main fields of economic and social policy.

Beyond the headquarters departments, the DRC oversees a family of subordinate institutions, including five research institutes, two centres and two associations, as well as publishing and media units. That wider family extends the centre's reach into enterprise evaluation, development research foundations and specialist fields that a single headquarters staff could not cover alone, and it helps explain how DRC studies surface in so many different policy debates.

Leadership

The centre's directors have been senior figures in Chinese economic policymaking. Ma Hong, one of the most prominent economists of the early reform era, served as director from 1990 to April 1993. Wang Mengkui directed the centre from March 1998 to June 2007, a period spanning China's accession to the World Trade Organization and the rapid growth that followed. Li Wei served from April 2011 to May 2019.

Since 8 July 2022 the director has been Lu Hao. Lu Hao's appointment brought to the DRC a leader whose career had been spent in senior government and party posts rather than in academia alone, consistent with the centre's character as a working part of the policy apparatus rather than a detached academic institute. On Think Tanks likewise records Lu Hao as the centre's leader through 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Role in five-year plans and major policy documents

The DRC's recommendations feed into Party Congress reports, Central Committee plenums and five-year plans. Five-year plans remain the central coordinating documents of Chinese economic and social policy, setting targets and priorities that ministries and provinces then implement, and the centre's involvement in their formulation gives its research a direct route into binding national policy. The same applies to the documents of party plenums devoted to reform, where research prepared in advance can shape the menu of options from which leaders choose.

This is the context in which the DRC is often described as China's most influential government-affiliated think tank on economic and social policy. A United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission backgrounder in 2013 put it plainly: the centre is viewed by many as China's most influential government-affiliated think tank when it comes to economic and social policy, its policy suggestions tend to be liberal and market-oriented, and it works closely with international organisations.

The 383 Scheme of 2013

The DRC's most famous single document is the reform blueprint released in October 2013 ahead of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, dubbed the "383 Scheme" or "383 Project". The name is a shorthand: three key themes, eight key reform areas, and three correlated reform combinations. Caixin summarised the trinity as the market, government and corporations, with the key task being to set up the right relationship between government and market, and the overall aim a vibrant, innovative, inclusive market economy protected by the rule of law.

The eight key reform areas began with government itself and state monopoly sectors, and extended to land ownership and administration and other fields. Contemporary reporting noted that the scheme called for breaking monopolies in a wide range of fields and lowering barriers to entry in industries including rail, oil and gas. The fact that one of its co-authors was Liu He, a key economic adviser to President Xi Jinping, focused intense attention on the paper's recommendations. Analysts cautioned at the time that the 383 Scheme was one proposal among many presented to the leadership — an articulation of particularly reform-minded forces — and that the plenum's own communiqué, issued on 12 November 2013, was milder than the scheme. Even so, the episode demonstrated the DRC's unusual ability to set the terms of national debate before a major party meeting had even taken place.

China 2030 and international cooperation

The DRC has run major research projects with international organisations and foreign institutions including the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Ford Foundation, and its profile also lists the Rockefeller Foundation among sponsors of its major projects. The best-known product of that cooperation is China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative Society, co-authored by the DRC and the World Bank and released in February 2012. The report examined how China could sustain growth and complete its transition to a market economy over the following two decades, and it was widely cited internationally as evidence of the centre's reform orientation and its willingness to work with outside institutions on sensitive questions.

Such cooperation serves two purposes. It brings international expertise and comparative experience into Chinese policy research, and it gives foreign governments and institutions a channel through which to understand the thinking of advisers close to China's leadership. Few Chinese research bodies combine that external engagement with the DRC's proximity to the State Council.

Publications and affiliated media

The centre speaks to professional audiences through affiliated publishing units. Management World, one of China's leading management and economics journals, is published within the DRC family, as are the China Development Review and the newspaper China Economic Times. Earlier institutional descriptions also listed China Development Press and the China Economic Yearbook among its affiliated outputs. These publications give DRC research and DRC-adjacent scholarship a public presence beyond the internal reports submitted to the State Council, and China Economic Times in particular carries the centre's perspective into daily economic journalism.

Research agenda

The subject matter of the centre follows from its functions. It studies the national economy and macroeconomic conditions; industrial development and the structure of industry, investment and ownership; technology selection, innovation and the development of new technologies; regional development policy; and the long-term, strategic questions of economic and social development that cut across all of these. Because it advises on mid- and long-term plans, its work characteristically looks beyond the current economic cycle to questions such as urbanisation, land and household-registration reform, the future of state-owned enterprises, and the sustainability of China's growth model — the same themes that surfaced in the 383 Scheme and in China 2030.

Place among Chinese think tanks

China has many policy research bodies: ministry institutes, academy institutes, university centres and, since the 1990s, a growing number of non-governmental think tanks. The DRC stands apart because of where it sits. As a ministerial-level institution directly under the State Council, established in 1981 and led by figures of national standing, it is part of the machinery by which the central government forms economic policy, not an outside commentator on it. Its history — from the early reform era, through the building of the socialist market economy, to the 383 Scheme and beyond — makes it one of the clearest institutional threads running through four decades of Chinese economic reform.

Access and official website

The DRC is headquartered at 225 Chaoyangmennei Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing, and its official website is en.drc.gov.cn, with the main site at drc.gov.cn. The sites present the centre's functions, organisation and leadership and carry news of its research and events. For readers of this directory, the Development Research Center of the State Council is recorded as a Beijing, China policy research institution established in 1981, working directly under the State Council on economic and social development policy.