China's 'brain bank': Leadership and elitism in Chinese Science and Engineering

The 1994 establishment of honorific membership systems of 'academicians' (yuanshi) in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) was an especially important expression of this intent to recognize and reward high achievement. In addition to honoring individual scientists and engineers and providing high-level institutional support for the values of scientific elitism, the yuanshi systems also serve as mechanisms for providing professional leadership in scientific and technological development and advice to national decision makers on difficult societal problems. As such, yuanshi systems can be thought of collectively as a national 'brain bank,' that is, an institution that (1) recruits members through peer review from among a nation's best scientists and engineers on the basis of professional merit; (2) maintains a close, but relatively autonomous, relationship with the political elite; (3) provides expertise to the political community, advising on national policy involving matters of science and technology; and (4), by virtue of qualities 1-3, can be considered as providing academic leadership for the society. As with brain banks in other countries, China's systems of academicians prompt questions about how elite status is determined and how the elite relate to the broader technical community and society more generally. In this article, we review the history of the academician systems, examine the social values of academicians and the procedures used for selecting them, consider elite characteristics, and discuss the policy roles of the academician systems in a rapidly changing China.