Abstract：Before 1949, China’s academic arena had been dominated by several prestigious universities/colleges, and specialized research organizations could rarely make a clear demonstration of their advantages. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the country has witnessed a dramatic change in history and a profound transformation in the research system. At the beginning of the new republic, the emerging Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) received some academic heritage and gained a good momentum of development. However, it still had to depend its research, to some extent, on universities or colleges. In 1952, there was a national reorientation of disciplines in the universities and colleges all over China. This offered CAS a good chance of obtaining various excellent resources as well as the top-priority in terms of financial support from the central government. It thus began to develop rapidly, and before long it could rival with the college research system. Finally CAS took the lead of Chinese academic research. As a result, there had been built an enormous and enduring tension between the two research forces. The higher educational system suffered a great loss of talents and a sharp decline in faculty quality. Besides, its administrative structure, institution, and academic ecology became incompetent for advanced research. The then decision makers in the central government had based their decisions on the practice on the part of the Soviet Union, giving CAS the leading role in academic research, which in fact imposed considerable pressure on universities and colleges. Therefore, the two research forces were involved in a long game for talents and academic dominance, which definitely hindered the advance of the nation’s research work and college education.This problem concerned various parties, including prominent scholars, universities, the Ministry of Higher Education, the State Council, and even the decision-makers in the CPC Central Committee. They had made constructive exploration of it in an attempt to rebalance the nation’s research system. In order to encourage the initiative of the two research forces, relevant departments and parties made an overall coordination. They took the advantage of the Science and Technology Development Plan and Philosophy and Social Science Plan, both started in 1956, to increase supplies of resources and to optimize the working mechanism of research, which helped establish a profound cooperation between the two forces and created a favorable environment for the development of technology and education. It is such a relationship of coexistence—involving competition as well as cooperation among different systems—that has characterized the new republic’s early research systems and improved its knowledge production. Although at that time China’s overall academic level distinctly fell behind that in developed countries, there still had been many achievements and breakthroughs in some fields. After 1978, China was once again accepted into the international order and the world knowledge system dominated by Europe and the United States. The relationship between CAS and the universities saw a reversal and, with universities restored to the center of academic arena, a new stage of China’s academic research began.The present article reconsiders the evolution of knowledge system as part of the process of social and political changes in China, and integrates the histories of education, technology and politics. It argues that the research system, in the early days of the PRC, was not a static and fixed one but a dynamic and evolving one; and that there had been a great dynamic tension that was gradually built during the close interaction among parties such as CAS, universities, the decision-makers in the central government, etc. Likewise, the dominance on the part of CAS had been gradually established through years of contests. Although the then research system of China had an imprint of the Soviet model, it differed at some degree from the latter. During the formation of the system, the decision-makers in the central government played a crucial role. This fact offers a good proof that political factors had been deeply involved in the construction of China’s academic system (research system). The present paper employs the analysis instruments from “global history” and Long Periodic Theory to expatiate the evolution process of China’s research system in the 20th Century and analyzes it in the context of global research progress. The exploration tries not only to combine the macro, meso and micro levels but also to merge the approaches of “time series analysis”, “event-process analysis”, and “institution-structure analysis”. It aims at a significant innovation in terms of perspective, approach, and findings so as to make a major improvement on the research of this topic.
刘超. 高校、中科院之竞合与新中国科研体制的早期演化[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2023, 53(1): 44-64.
Liu Chao. Competition and Cooperation Between Colleges and Chinese Academy of Sciences under the Early Evolution of China's Research System. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2023, 53(1): 44-64.
2023, Vol. 53 
