On 7^th March 2023, China’s State Council announced plans to reform ministries and government bodies as part of the country’s “two sessions” or Lianghui, the annual meeting of the country’s parliament and national political advisory body in Beijing. Two of these reforms target the country's scientific and technology work, including the restructuring of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and the creating of a new national data bureau.

At the top of the plan is to reform the MOST. The main changes include:

• Transferring responsibility for high-level leadership over science and technology policy to a new centralised decision-making body, the Central Commission on Science and Technology. The Commission will be directly led by the Central Committee of the CCP and function through the restructured MOST.
• Transferring a number of MOST’s other responsibilities – including rural development, ecological and social development, establishing industrial zones, and attracting overseas talents – to other ministries, in order to streamline MOST’s responsibilities and allow it to focus on critical and fundamental research and emerging technologies.
• Transferring responsibility for science & technology review and management to other ministries, in order to allow MOST to focus its efforts on monitoring and evaluation of these projects. However, fundamental research and critical research projects will still be managed by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (a body under MOST) and MOST itself.

These changes are aimed to “accelerate the realisation of high-level self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology, in consideration of the severe situation of international science and technology competition as well as external suppression and containment”, said Xiao Jie, State Councillor and Secretary General of the State Council.

In addition, a national data bureau is proposed to be responsible for coordinating the sharing and development of China’s data resources, with an ultimate goal to push forward the national planning of building a Digital China, the digital economy and the digital society. The new bureau will operate under the National Development and Reform Commission, the economic planning department of the State Council.

Analysis:

This is the second reform of the MOST in 5 years. Science and technology (S&T) has always been at the centre of China’s national planning and strategy, and self-reliance has been a longstanding priority in this area. While China has become an impactful science and research power with the second largest research and development (R&D) spending in the world, the country has faced increasing global competition and constraints from foreign governments in recent years, and the reform of MOST is a strategic move to address this.

The most notable change is the establishment of the Central Commission on Science and Technology, which aims to strengthen capabilities on national S&T development and strategy. According to Prof Xue Lan, the Dean of Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University, the MOST being a single ministry had limited power to co-ordinate nation-wide S&T tasks especially when working with other ministries. Through the new Central Commission, however, the restructured MOST will be better able to implement critical S&T strategies.

So far there is not a great amount of detail about the national data bureau, and even the official name has not been confirmed yet. Nevertheless, among the functions described in the plan is developing fundamental policies and regulations for data management and digital economy. According to Prof Xue Lan, the difference between the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and the new bureau is that the CAC, being a regulatory authority, oversees data transfer and data security whilst the new bureau will focus on the fundamental role of data elements to promote the development of the digital economy.

References:

Explanation on the Institutional Reform Plan of the State Council. Xinhua News Agency. http://www.news.cn/politics/2023lh/2023-03/08/c_1129420084.htm

An Interview with Prof Xue Lan: What Signal does the Institutional Reform of the State Council Send?. China News Weekly. http://www.inewsweek.cn/politics/2023-03-09/17795.shtml