China faces science reform challenges, including favoritism

Therefore, policies since 2013 have intended to radically reform the nation's research institutions and broader innovation system. Under a new financial scheme, the nation's S&T programs have been reorganized to use government R&D expenditures more efficiently and to complete the translation of research to commercialization more effectively. The country has undergone institutional and project management changes, including an initiative that reorganizes the Chinese Academy of Science's more than 100 institutes into four major thematic categories.

In terms of technology transfer, the Chinese government has also approved policy that would allow academics greater freedom to do part-time work with companies. Despite these promising reforms, the authors note that the autonomy of the resulting committees, institutions and other bodies is unclear. The reforms subject scientists to organizational churn that may be counterproductive, Cao and Suttmeier say, concluding that whether these approaches will function well within the framework of Chinese political landscape remains to be seen.

In a related Perspective, Yu Xie focuses on a recent study showing that election of membership to the two most prestigious scientific organizations in China appears to be influenced by "guanxi," essentially a person's social network associated with their hometown. The study found that sharing the same place of origin with selection committee members boosts a candidate's probability of election success by about 40%. Xie notes that similar favoritism in science has been found in studies of other cultures, and emphasizes that this latest work "remind[s] us that science is ultimately a social institution affecting, and affected by, human behavior."