The number of members from China’s leading scientific and engineering institutes in the top ranks of the Communist Party has doubled over the course of a decade, according to a new report.
It said the number of academicians in the party’s 18th Central Committee, selected in 2012, stood at 15, accounting for around 3.5 per cent of the total membership.
But when the 20th Central Committee started its five-year term in 2022, this total had risen to 30, around 8 per cent of the total, including seven full members.
The Central Committee has more than 350 members – including full and alternate – and is a key decision-making body for directing policy and endorsing changes to the party leadership.
This increase is particularly noteworthy, as scientists historically had limited direct representation in the party’s top leadership and instead acted as consultants.
Meanwhile, provincial leaders, military officers and senior political figures typically dominated the upper ranks.
Academician is a lifetime title awarded by the country’s leading official research institutions, such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE).
The new members of these bodies are chosen every two years and no more than 200 can join at a time.
At present CAS has 893 members and CAE has 984.
The increased role played by academicians reflects the increasing importance of scientific and technological backgrounds in the selection of China’s political elites, according to the report’s authors, Li Cheng, the founding director of the Centre on Contemporary China and the World, a think tank based at the University of Hong Kong, and Zhao Xiuye, a researcher at the centre.
Leading scientists are now also being given an increased role in government, either by shaping policy in related fields or through being given provincial leadership roles – a trend the report described as a “revolving door with Chinese characteristics”.
A typical example is Education Minister Huai Jinpeng, a computer scientist who became a member of the CAS in 2009.
He was appointed vice-minister of industry and information technology in 2015 and became a member of the Central Committee two years later.
The report said Huai’s background meant that the former president of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics could play a role in shaping industrial policy and educational reform.
Although there are no academicians in the Politburo, the party’s core decision-making body, its members include several with scientific or technological backgrounds who entered politics through this “revolving door”.
These include Chen Jining, the Shanghai party chief and a former environmental scientist; Li Ganjie, a physicist and former head of the National Nuclear Safety Administration; Yuan Jiajun, a former aerospace engineer and chief designer of the Shenzhou spacecraft project; and Vice-Premier Zhang Guoqing, a former defence contractor.
Li and Zhao said the increasing prominence of scientists in such roles reflected the leadership’s increasing focus on “new-quality productivity” – a phrase coined by President Xi Jinping to describe the increasing importance of hi-tech fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and aerospace to economic development.
The report – published in Think China, an online commentary magazine published by the Singaporean newspaper Lianhe Zaobao – added that Beijing had been actively recruiting academicians in these emerging fields to sit on the Central Committee.
It cited the example of Chen Jie, an AI specialist and member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, who is now an alternate member of the Central Committee and vice-minister for education.
However, in recent years the country’s top scientists have also faced increased scrutiny as part of China’s long-running anti-corruption campaign.
At least six former members or alternate members of the Central Committee have been removed from the list of academicians since 2012.
No official reason has been given for their removal, but it is a strong indication that the scientists are under investigation for suspected corruption. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
