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China The Relation with Economic Reform
Implementing the reforms of the science and technology system,
however, presupposed reforms of the economic, industrial, and local
administrative systems
(see Reform of the Economic System, Beginning in 1979
, ch. 5). In general, science and technology
reforms represented the application to that sector of the
principles underlying the sweeping reforms of the economy proposed
in the October 1984 "Decision of the Central Committee of the
Chinese Communist Party on Reform of the Economic Structure." Both
reform "decisions" emphasized greater autonomy for institutions, a
greater role for the market, more competition, and rewards for the
successful introduction of improved products and processes. In
every case, the goal was increased productivity and economic
benefit.
The central provisions of the 1980s reform related to funding,
the technology market and cooperative ventures, and the rights and
potential job mobility of individual researchers. The intent of the
reformers was to change the basic conditions of the economic
system, so that the self-interest that had pushed managers of
factories and research institutes toward compartmentalization,
duplication, and hoarding of resources would henceforth push them
toward cooperation, division of labor, and orientation toward the
needs of the market. Because these reforms represented a radical
departure from the procedures developed since the 1950s, the
leadership anticipated that their implementation would be slow, and
it planned to phase them in over a number of years.
Perhaps because of the centrality of funding to the whole
reform scheme and because the administrative machinery for handling
budgets was already in place, many concrete provisions for funding
research were adopted following the March 1985 Central Committee
decision. In February 1986 the State Council promulgated
provisional regulations under which science and technology projects
listed in the annual state economic plan were to be completed as
contract research, in which there would be nationwide open bidding
on the contracts. Banks were to monitor expenditures under the
contract. Institutes conducting basic research were to have their
regular operating expenses guaranteed by the state, but all other
income would come from competitive research grants. The government
was to continue to fund completely the institutes working in public
health and medicine, family planning, environmental science,
technical information, meteorology, and agriculture. In 1986 the
newly established National Natural Science Foundation, explicitly
modeled on the United States National Science Foundation, disbursed
its first competitive awards, totaling -Y95 million (for value of
the
yuan--see Glossary),
to 3,432 research projects selected from
12,000 applications. The amount of money awarded to individual
projects was not large, but the precedent of competition, disregard
of administrative boundaries, and expert appraisal of individual or
small-group proposals was established and widely publicized. And,
early in 1987, the NDSTIC announced that henceforth weapons
procurement and military research and development would be managed
through contracts and competitive bidding.
Data as of July 1987
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