About Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences

Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences

The Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences (SASS; in Chinese, Sichuan Sheng Shehui Kexueyuan) is the comprehensive social-science research academy of Sichuan Province in southwestern China. Based in Chengdu, the provincial capital, it was founded in 1978 and has since been described as one of China's leading comprehensive social-science research institutions. The Academy serves as the think tank of both the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China and the People's Government of Sichuan Province, and it operates with full financial backing from the Party and the government. Its official website is published at sss.net.cn. In the Chinese system of provincial academies, institutions of this kind combine academic research, policy advice and postgraduate training under one roof, and Sichuan's academy is a large example of the type: its own published introduction records 15 research institutes, a graduate school, 10 departments of scientific research management and services, and 17 branches. This profile sets out what is verifiably known about the Academy's role, structure, people, research, publishing and resources, drawing on the Academy's own published introduction and on institutional listings that record its work.

Role as a Provincial Think Tank

The defining feature of the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences is its dual identity. It is at once an academic institution, carrying out disciplinary research across the social sciences, and an official think tank, supplying analysis and advice to the provincial Party committee and the provincial government that fund it. The Academy's own introduction states this plainly: it is the think tank for the People's Government of Sichuan Province and the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the CPC, with full financial backing of the Party and the government. That funding model matters for understanding how the Academy works. Because its core budget is publicly allocated rather than dependent on commercial income, its research agenda can be directed toward questions of provincial development and public policy that may have no commercial sponsor, while its scholars remain expected to produce academically credible work. Under the guidance and support of the provincial Party committee and government leadership, the Academy states its objective as accelerating the construction of four things: a strong theoretical position, a high-end decision-making think tank, a first-class academic institution and an important base for the popularisation of science. Its published introduction adds that its comprehensive strength among China's local academies of social sciences is among the best nationwide, a standing consistent with the scale of its staff, its graduate programmes and its publishing output described below.

Foundation and Setting

The Academy was founded in 1978, a date recorded both in institutional listings and in the candidate record for this profile. That founding places its creation at the start of China's reform and opening period, when provincial governments across the country were building or rebuilding dedicated social-science research capacity to support economic and social planning. The Academy is headquartered in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, a province whose internal diversity shapes much of its research agenda: a large agricultural sector, major industrial cities, extensive minority areas in its west, and questions of rural development, ageing, migration and cultural heritage that recur throughout the Academy's documented research topics. Institutional listings describe the Academy as renowned since its founding as one of China's leading comprehensive social-science research institutions, with 15 affiliated institutes undertaking research in fields including economics, sociology, philosophy and information science. The Academy's Chinese name, Sichuan Sheng Shehui Kexueyuan, follows the standard naming pattern of China's provincial academies of social sciences, each of which serves its own province while participating in a national academic system headed at national level by separate institutions in Beijing.

Structure: Institutes, Graduate School and Branches

According to the Academy's published introduction, the institution consists of 15 institutes, one graduate school, 10 departments of scientific research management services and 17 branches. The 15 institutes are the research core: they organise scholars by discipline and field, covering areas that institutional listings summarise as including economics, sociology, philosophy and information science. The names of individual institutes also appear in the scholarly record when Academy researchers publish: recent journal articles carry affiliations such as the Institute of Rural Development, the Institute of Industrial and Open Economy, the Research Institute of Finance and Trade Economics, the Regional Economy Research Institute and the Institute of Political Science, all at the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences in Chengdu. The 10 departments of scientific research management services handle the administrative and support functions that a research institution of this size requires, while the 17 branches extend the Academy's presence beyond its Chengdu headquarters. Alongside the research institutes sits the graduate school, which makes the Academy a degree-training institution as well as a research body, a combination examined in the education section below.

People: Staff and Scholarly Strength

The Academy's published introduction gives a detailed staffing picture as at the end of 2015. At that date the staff numbered 1,200 in total, including 710 employees with full financial allocation, among them 459 on-the-job employees and 265 retired employees, together with 405 master graduate students studying at the Academy. Among the scientific research personnel, 62 employees held senior professional titles and 125 held associate senior professional titles. The introduction further records 19 employees who are experts entitled to special allowances of the State Council, 21 employees recognised as provincial academic and technical leaders, and 16 employees recognised as experts with outstanding contributions at provincial level. A total of 115 employees held doctorate degrees. These figures, though dating from the end of 2015, are the Academy's own published account of its human resources and they illustrate the profile of a senior research institution: a core of experienced, highly titled scholars, a recognised group of experts honoured at national and provincial level, and a substantial body of postgraduate students being trained within the same institution. The combination of research staff and students under one roof is characteristic of China's academy system, in which the provincial academies function partly like universities without undergraduate teaching.

Research Agenda

The Academy's documented research topics show a strongly Sichuan-centred agenda applied to national questions. Institutional listings of the Academy's research record topics such as sustainable economic development models for Sichuan Province; the transformation of old industrial structures toward energy-efficient models; the ageing population and the direction of services for the elderly; the development of multinational businesses in Sichuan and the lessons of their successes; how to capitalise on Chengdu's unique cultural heritage to develop its cultural industry; Sichuan cuisine and its impact on the economy; the history of the Tea Road and the Southern Silk Route and their impact; Sichuan's ancient irrigation system and its management; the role of tea, liquor and wine in Sichuan's cultural development; recommendations on Chengdu's cultural image; corporate social responsibility among multinational and local enterprises; post-Wenchuan earthquake reconstruction; the preservation of western Sichuan minority cultures; minority cultural tourism development; and the social impact of migrant worker movements on local villages. More recent peer-reviewed work by Academy institutes continues these themes: a 2025 study by researchers of the Institute of Rural Development examined how new-type urbanisation and public services affect rural-urban income gaps across western China, supported by a National Social Science Foundation project and by an Academy innovation team devoted to the theory and practice of the "three rural issues" with Chinese characteristics. Academy researchers have also published internationally on Sino-African digital cooperation in agriculture, with authors drawn from several of its economics and political-science institutes.

Graduate Education and Disciplines

Education is a major part of the Academy's mandate. Its published introduction records eight provincial key disciplines and 11 excellent disciplines, five first-level disciplines and 44 graduate degree programmes at second-level discipline level, one joint doctoral programme and one national post-doctoral research station. The graduate school is the organisational home of this training, and the 405 master graduate students recorded at the end of 2015 indicate the scale of enrolment at that time. The structure of first-level and second-level disciplines follows China's national disciplinary catalogue, under which a first-level discipline is a broad field and second-level disciplines are the specialties within which degrees are actually awarded; 44 such programmes is a wide portfolio for a provincial academy and reflects the breadth of its 15 institutes. The joint doctoral programme and the national post-doctoral research station extend the training ladder beyond the master's degree, allowing the Academy to host early-career researchers at the highest levels of the Chinese academic system even though, like other provincial academies, it primarily awards master's degrees through its own graduate school.

Publishing: Journals, a Newspaper and Websites

The Academy is also a significant publisher. Its introduction records that it sponsors nine magazines and one newspaper. The magazines are Social Science Research, Mao Zedong Thought Study, Deng Xiaoping Research, Reform of Economic System, Rural Economy, Forum on Chinese Culture, Western China, Contemporary County Economy and Contemporary Social Sciences, the last of these published in English. The newspaper is Entrepreneur Daily. Several of these titles are substantial scholarly journals in their own right: Social Science Research and Rural Economy, in particular, correspond directly to the Academy's disciplinary strengths in general social-science theory and in agricultural and rural economics, the field in which its Institute of Rural Development works. The English-language Contemporary Social Sciences carries the ISSN 2096-0212 and is recorded in international serials listings with the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences as publisher, giving the Academy a channel for presenting Chinese social-science research to an international readership. In digital publishing, the Academy hosts three websites: Sichuan Social Sciences Online, the portal website of provincial philosophy and social sciences; the Academy's own website, presented as the Tianfu Think Tank; and an English website. The Tianfu name, drawn from Sichuan's historic description as a land of abundance, also brands the Academy's think-tank identity in its public-facing work.

Library and Information Resources

Supporting both research and training, the Academy maintains substantial literature and information resources. Its published introduction records a collection of 720,000 books and more than 2,000 kinds of Chinese and foreign periodicals. In addition to its own database resources, the Academy has access to a range of academic databases, which its introduction lists as including China National Knowledge Infrastructure, SOSHOO, Zhonghongwang, Duxiu, Chaoxing, the National Social Sciences Database, the Communist Party of China's political and theoretical resources database, Dacheng Data and DRCnet. For a social-science institution, such holdings are working infrastructure rather than decoration: the book and periodical collections underpin historical, philological and theoretical research, while the database subscriptions give researchers access to the national journal literature, statistical and policy materials and the Party's theoretical publications that provincial think-tank work requires. The scale of the collection, recorded in the Academy's own introduction, is consistent with its position among the stronger local academies of social sciences in China.

How the Academy Fits China's Academy System

China's social-science research is organised in layers, and the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences occupies the provincial layer of that system. Above it at national level sits the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, a ministry-level institution founded in 1977; below and beside it, Sichuan's universities carry out their own social-science research. The provincial academy's distinctive contribution is the combination recorded throughout this profile: research explicitly oriented to the development problems of its own province, direct think-tank service to the provincial Party committee and government that fund it, postgraduate training through its graduate school, and a publishing programme of journals and a newspaper that disseminates its work. Its documented research topics, from post-earthquake reconstruction after the Wenchuan earthquake to minority culture preservation in western Sichuan and the economics of Sichuan cuisine, are topics that a national institution would be unlikely to study with the same local depth. At the same time, participation in national funding programmes such as National Social Science Foundation projects, and publication in international journals, connect its scholars to national and global academic conversations. The Academy's own stated goals, to build a strong theoretical position, a high-end decision-making think tank, a first-class academic institution and an important base for science popularisation, summarise this bridging role between scholarship and provincial governance.

Practical Information

The Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences is based in Chengdu, Sichuan, and its official website is sss.net.cn, through which its Tianfu Think Tank presence, its Sichuan Social Sciences Online portal and its English website are organised. Readers seeking the Academy's research should note the names under which its units publish: journal articles and project credits appear under institute names including the Institute of Rural Development, the Institute of Industrial and Open Economy, the Research Institute of Finance and Trade Economics, the Regional Economy Research Institute and the Institute of Political Science, as well as under the Academy's name itself. Its sponsored periodicals, including Social Science Research, Rural Economy and the English-language Contemporary Social Sciences, are the most accessible published record of its scholars' work. Founded in 1978 and funded in full by the Sichuan Party committee and provincial government it advises, the Academy remains, on its own published account, one of the strongest of China's local academies of social sciences, combining 15 research institutes, a graduate school and a 720,000-volume library in a single provincial institution.