Institutions Outpace Ideas in ‘Autonomous Knowledge System’

Institutions Outpace Ideas in ‘Autonomous Knowledge System’

Executive Summary:

• To establish sovereignty over ideas, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has since 2022 made the construction of an “autonomous knowledge system” an explicit objective, aiming to produce concepts and theories distinct from Western ones and capable of explaining the governance and social reality of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
• The effort is directed at the level of objectives and distributed at the level of content. The center supplies the goal and the label, while ministries, funding bodies, universities, associations, publishers, and individual scholars each write it into the one part of the academic system they control.
• The consequence is expansion outpacing content. Institutional forms multiply well ahead of the concepts meant to fill them, because disciplines, colleges, degree points, journals, and textbook series can be created by decision and concepts cannot. Every instrument the Party-state controls is institutional, and institutions can require, fund, and reward original theory without being able to supply it. Four years on, the record therefore is highly uneven.

In December 2025 the Ministry of Public Security argued that police work should favor domestic dog breeds such as the Kunming dog over German Shepherds and Rottweilers, framing the shift as a response to “global competition in police dog technology” (全球警犬技术竞争) and a means of fostering “independent control” (自主可控) of police dog breed resources within the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (Xinhua, December 18, 2025). As reporting by Reuters noted, however, the Kunming dog is not indigenous to the PRC, but the product of decades of artificial breeding from Alsatians and local dogs at a specialist canine center in Yunnan in the 1950s (Reuters, December 19).

The episode is illustrative of a much larger trend. Speaking at Renmin University in April 2022, General Secretary Xi Jinping declared that accelerating the construction of philosophy and social sciences with Chinese characteristics is a matter of “constructing China’s autonomous knowledge system” (建构中国自主的知识体系) (People’s Daily, April 26, 2022). Scholars describe the “autonomous knowledge system” (AKS) as cognition of the laws governing human society formed endogenously from China’s own historical and contemporary practical experience (Yu & Huang, 2023). [1] To justify its emergence, Xi used the same speech to argue that Chinese socialism had “raised a large number of new problems” (出了大量 … 的新问题) amid the acceleration of “great changes unseen in a century” (世界百年未有之大变局), casting inherited, largely Western frameworks as ill-equipped to address them. Another rationale is civilizational: Wang Yiwei (王义桅) of Renmin University argues that the ground of an autonomous system is Chinese civilization itself, which he describes as “independent and autonomous, continuous, and constantly renewing itself” (独立自主、连续不断、苟日新日日新) (Beijing Daily, June 6, 2022). [2]

Calls to build an AKS date back to the Marxist Theory Research and Construction Project launched in 2004, but institutional efforts only began in 2019, when the Ministry of Education launched a New Liberal Arts initiative alongside parallel programs in engineering, medicine, and agriculture (Study Times, May 5, 2023). A dedicated work conference followed in November 2020, which led to the creation of interdisciplinary programs, laboratories, and curricular reforms (Guangming Daily, October 18, 2024). The AKS is therefore not strictly new, but its expansion in recent years has accelerated.

Management of the system is supervised by bodies that sit within the Party’s propaganda system, such as the National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences (全国哲学社会科学工作办公室) (NOPSS, January 26, 2024). Responsibility for writing the concept into individual components of the academic system, however, falls to ministries, funding bodies, universities, associations, publishers, and scholars. As a result, political incentives and imperatives have enabled the AKS to become embedded across the education system in a short space of time.

Sites of Knowledge Production

The government has brought numerous academic disciplines under the expanding umbrella of the AKS. The Ministry of Education’s primary contribution is the creation of new “first-level disciplines” (一级学科), the level at which degree-granting authority is assigned. Three created in a September 2022 catalog revision have been framed in AKS terms: CCP History and Party-building (中共党史党建学), Discipline Inspection and Supervision Studies (纪检监察学), and Area Studies (区域国别学) (State Council Academic Degrees Committee and Ministry of Education, September 13, 2022). The latter is rapidly expanding as a discipline. Area studies centers grew from 395 to 453 across 186 universities between 2017–2024 (Chinese Social Sciences Today [CSST], February 23, 2024, December 9, 2025). National Security Studies (国家安全学) had been created in December 2020 as one of the two founding first-level disciplines of a new interdisciplinary category, alongside Integrated Circuit Science and Engineering (集成电路科学与工程). From 2022 onward, scholars began calling for the construction of an autonomous national security knowledge system, thereby appropriating it for the AKS (CSST, October 18, 2022).

Universities provide organizational homes for these disciplines. By the end of 2024, CCP History and Party-building consisted of 39 research institutes, 14 doctoral and 30 master’s programs, and four specialized master’s programs in Party affairs management, on the discipline alliance’s own roster (Renmin University CCP History and Party-building Research Center, January 2, 2025). [3] Renmin University unveiled the country’s first dedicated CCP History and Party-building college in March 2023 (CSST, March 24, 2023). By mid-2026, ten schools had been established. [4] The Ministry has also built a network of philosophy and social science laboratories, launched in December 2021 with a first batch of 30 and expanded to 55 by November 2025 (Ministry of Education [MOE], December 12, 2021; Guangming Daily, May 12).

Scholars stake out new territory within the frame. Zhou Ping (周平) of Yunnan University presents “ethnopolitics” (民族政治学) as a branch of political science that has already built a theoretical system and counts as “an important achievement of autonomous knowledge production in political science” (政治学自主性知识生产的一项重要成果) (Guangming Daily, April 7, 2023). Zhou is not alone. Calls to establish the AKS in different disciplines have proliferated, from diplomatic studies to history, public finance and taxation, and even Trade Union Studies (Workers’ Daily, August 22, 2022; CSST, January 31, 2023; Qiushi, October 16, 2025, October 30, 2025).

The bodies that certify such claims are staffed by the same people who make them. Under rules issued in December 2025, meeting-based review of new doctoral degree authorizations is entrusted to “discipline review groups” (学科评议组) or professional-degree steering committees, though final approval remains with the State Council Academic Degrees Committee. These rules relax conditions for programs deemed to serve central policy decisions and national security priorities (State Council Academic Degrees Committee, December 4, 2025). One scholar who sits on one of these steering committees is Yang Fengcheng (杨凤城) of Renmin University. Yang submitted a proposal to establish CCP history and Party building as a first-level discipline and went on, as a member of that discipline’s review group, to help draft and implement its construction scheme (Guangming Daily, April 16).

Steering Knowledge Production

Once sites exist for the production of “autonomous knowledge,” a distributed process directs production through funding agencies, universities, disciplinary associations, and institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

Funding agencies set priorities. By May 2026, the Ministry of Education’s Major Special Projects in Research on Philosophy and Social Science with Chinese Characteristics (中国特色哲学社会科学研究重大专项) had approved projects across all 29 first-level philosophy and social science disciplines, involving more than 100 universities (MOE, May 16). These are organized as coordinated clusters: in political science, Peking University’s Wang Puqu (王浦劬) serves as general convener of an AKS initiative comprising seven major projects led by scholars from several universities and research institutions (Fudan Development Institute, November 17, 2025). The program publishes no per-grant figure; the Ministry’s parallel Major Key-Tackling Project tender for 2025 sets awards between renminbi (RMB) 500,000–800,000 ($75–120,000). At the national level, the National Social Science Fund named major basic theoretical problems bearing on the AKS among problem types constituting the “main thrust” (主攻方向) of its 2025 major-project call (National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences, May 26, 2025). CASS’s Philosophy and Social Science Innovation Project, meanwhile, was the recipient of a research-institution appropriation of almost RMB 2 billion ($300 million) in 2025 (CASS, March 2025).

Provinces and universities add their own money, though the figures come from the funders’ own retrospectives. Guangdong, for example, budgeted RMB 450,000 ($67,000) in 2025 for 15 projects explicitly devoted to constructing AKSs in economics, political science, and law (Jinan University, May 30, 2025). Shanghai, meanwhile, reports assembling 58 research teams under a dedicated Major Research on the AKS program (Jiefang Daily, May 17). Since 2023, Nankai University has invested more than RMB 10 million ($1.5 million) in textbook development, providing RMB 50,000–100,000 ($7,500–15,000) in matching funds for each national-level project, and its Political Economy of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, published in December 2024 and now in use at more than 80 universities, is presented as a step toward building an AKS in economics (China Education Daily, April 3).

Disciplinary associations are among the most active actors. In November 2023, the “China Society of Supervision” (中国监察学会) was renamed the “China Discipline Inspection and Supervision Association” (CDISA; 中国纪检监察协会), following the creation of a new discipline, Discipline Inspection and Supervision Studies, in 2022 (CDISA, April 15, 2024). In June 2024, it established a discipline-construction branch that was mandated with building disciplinary, academic, discourse, and knowledge systems (China University of Political Science and Law, June 12, 2024). Its designated supervising body is the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission (CCDI-NSC), while it is registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs; amendments to its charter require approval from both bodies. Alliances perform a parallel function: the CCP History and Party-building Discipline Construction Alliance, announced at Renmin University in November 2023, issued a five-point initiative covering autonomous knowledge, disciplinary, academic, discourse, and talent-training systems (CSST, November 17, 2023).

Institutions then define what good AKS scholarship looks like. A separate University Alliance for Constructing China’s AKS (建构中国自主的知识体系大学联盟), founded at Renmin University in April 2023, runs a quarterly results-release event vetted by a committee drawn from academia, publishing, and the central media (Renmin University, November 25, 2024).

Reproducing Knowledge

Degree pathways follow, so that core “autonomous” knowledge can “enter the minds” (进头脑) of students (Guangming Online, May 14). Dedicated schemes have been set up to cultivate talent for AKS construction. These include CASS’s Youth Launch Plan (青启计划), which supported 193 young scholars in 2024, as well as the Cultivate-the-Distant Plan (培远计划), which lets scholars under 50 set their own topics and “undertake no assessment tasks for five years” (5年内无须承担考核任务) (CASS, January 23, 2025; China Youth Daily, December 29, 2025; CSST, May 18).

The Ministry of Education has targeted the creation of thousands of textbooks to “accelerate the creation of an AKS” (加快自主知识体系). As of early 2026, the draft list contained 3,404 titles. Though substantial, this is well short of its aim of 1,000 key and 5,000 selected undergraduate textbooks (MOE, November 20, 2023; China Education Online, January 19). [5] Other institutions have added to the corpus of educational resources. The Educational Science Publishing House launched an RMB 10 million ($1.5 million) China Pedagogy AKS publishing program (China Youth Daily, December 22, 2025). The most elaborate case is a nine-volume unified textbook set for Discipline Inspection and Supervision Studies, jointly organized by the CCDI-NSC and the Ministry of Education and published in early 2026 (China Education Daily, February 13). A Handbook of the Chinese Legal Studies AKS (中国法学自主知识体系学科手册) distills the signature concepts of 22 branches of law (MOE, May 16).

Scholars supply the specific vocabulary, from “incremental democracy” (增量民主) in political science to “interethnic political integration” (族际政治整合) in ethnopolitics (Guangming Daily, April 7, 2023). [6] The most cited candidates elsewhere, however, come from older fields with prior empirical cores rather than from the four disciplines built by institutional fiat.

Expansion Outpaces Innovation

The construction of the AKS faces several problems. The first concerns uneven institutional development. While infrastructure has expanded rapidly, talent cultivation is lagging. A 2023 survey found that the flagship discipline of Party History was contracting, even as the center created a first-level discipline for it. Over roughly a decade, institutions offering it at the master’s level fell from 96 to 71, and those offering it for doctoral students dropped from 26 to 20. In 2021, only 11 doctoral programs enrolled anyone at all (Theory China, August 12, 2023). Area Studies shows the opposite pattern: rapid expansion and clustered applications have prompted debate over possible talent oversupply, although some scholars argue that high-level supply remains inadequate and that the more immediate risk is homogenization (China Brief, May 29). The only institution formally approved to offer the discipline as an undergraduate major, Beijing Foreign Studies University, reportedly did not recruit students externally in 2025 (Shanghai Observer, September 13, 2025).

Intellectual autonomy is a second strain. Xie Tao (谢韬), dean of the School of International Relations at Beijing Foreign Studies University, observes that area studies lacks “an independent theoretical system, and therefore … needs to borrow the theories of mature disciplines such as political science, history, economics, and sociology” (可以说先天缺乏独立的理论体系，因而…需要借用政治学、历史学、经济学、社会学等成熟学科的理论). [7] One account of the reform-era debate over the philosophy textbook system observes that understanding of Marxist philosophy in the PRC “has still not managed to depart from the ontological horizon of Western dualism” (依然未能出离西方二元论的存在论视域). [8] A related weakness is fragmentation: Xu Yong (徐勇) of Central China Normal University is reported as arguing that indigenous concepts risk remaining “concept orphans” (概念孤儿), and that the task is to link them through hub concepts into a “concept family” (概念家族) (CSST, November 14, 2023). The diagnosis is not universally shared in this form. The philosopher Yang Guorong (杨国荣) warns against both “explaining China through China alone” (以中释中) and the opposite extreme of treating Western doctrines as a universal standard. [9] Finding the right balance between indigenization and continued openness is therefore a challenge.

Third, the incentives are administrative rather than epistemic, and they can work against the project. The 2023 survey’s first finding is that academic evaluation negatively affects enthusiasm, resulting in “insufficient endogenous motivation” (内生动力不足). Because CCP History and Party-building overlaps with the established discipline of Marxist Theory, and results and teaching staff cannot be counted twice in evaluation, this leaves many universities with little incentive to apply to teach both (Theory China, August 12, 2023). Cheng Meidong (程美东), who directs Peking University’s Research Center for CCP History, warns that unless method, path, and purpose are clarified, “it is easy to turn the construction of China’s AKS into ‘piling in all at once,’ campaign-style scholarship” (就容易把建构中国自主的知识体系搞成“一哄而上”的运动式学术研究) (Hubei Daily, May 25). Once funds and support dry up, so might scholarship.

Conclusion

Four years after Xi Jinping first articulated the concept, the AKS has evolved from a political formula into an institutional project that increasingly permeates the PRC’s system of knowledge production. This approach rests on a wager familiar from other domains of the Party-state’s statecraft: if you build the institutions, the substance comes. Whether that logic transfers from bridges and power grids to concepts remains an open question. While the AKS’s objectives are set centrally, its content is filled in from many directions at once. The Ministry of Education creates disciplinary jurisdictions, funding bodies redirect research agendas, universities establish organizational homes, associations convene and certify, publishers develop teaching materials, and scholars elaborate concepts and canonical works. None of this is independent of the state, and the propaganda system supplies the coordination. While this explains the speed of institutional construction, it also helps explain why institutional expansion has so far outpaced theoretical innovation: the Party-state’s apparatus can produce institutions and its instruments can compel attempts at theoretical innovation, but it cannot secure their success.

This decentralized process helps explain the project’s uneven development. Different disciplines have advanced at different speeds, and many of the concepts intended to replace Western frameworks continue to rely on them. The AKS is therefore best understood as an ongoing process of institutional construction. Its future significance depends less on the political prominence of the formula than on whether the institutions and scholars it has assembled ultimately generate durable theories and concepts that are accepted beyond the institutional apparatus sustaining them.

Notes

[1] Yu Jianxing [郁建兴] and Huang Biao [黄飚], “Constructing China’s Autonomous Knowledge System and Its Global Significance [建构中国自主知识体系及其世界意义],” CASS Journal of Political Science [政治学研究], no. 3 (2023), p.15.

[2] Wang Yiwei, deputy director of Renmin University’s Institute of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, addresses the obvious objection that Marxism is itself a Western tradition. He argues the two resonate: dialectical materialism is described not as an import but as having “found in China a civilizational carrier 5,000 years unbroken” (在中国寻找到五千年连续不断的文明载体). The emphasis throughout is that the ground of the system is Chinese civilization, with Marxism as the tradition that resonates with it.

[3] The 14 doctoral programs counted here are current authorizations under the new first-level discipline, and are a different object from the 20 legacy doctoral points and the 11 that admitted students in 2021, both cited later from the 2023 survey.

[4] The ten schools are at Renmin University, Inner Mongolia Normal University, Yulin College, Jinggangshan University, Yan’an University, Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, Yunnan Normal University, Shandong Normal University, Jiaxing University, and Southwestern University of Finance and Economics.

[5] The 3,404 figure is not on the landing page but buried in the page’s metadata.

[6] Fang Lei [方雷] and Lu Teng [卢腾], “Knowledge Production in the Conceptual System of Contemporary Chinese Political Science [当代中国政治学概念体系的知识生产],” CASS Journal of Political Science [政治学研究], no. 2 (2025), p.120: “the concept of ‘incremental democracy’ is a theoretical summation of how China, through reform, creates new political increments and thereby comprehensively advances the process of national democracy” (“增量民主”概念则是对中国通过改革创造新的政治增量，从而全面推进国家民主进程的理论概括).

[7] Xie Tao [谢韬], “Area Studies: From Serving National Strategic Needs to Constructing an Autonomous Knowledge System [区域国别研究：从服务国家战略需求到建构自主知识体系],” Journal of Tsinghua University (Philosophy and Social Sciences) 39, no. 3 (2024), p.45.

[8] Liu Xiongwei [刘雄伟], “Li Dazhao’s Philosophical Thought and the Construction of an Autonomous Knowledge System in Contemporary Chinese Philosophy [李大钊哲学思想与当代中国哲学自主知识体系构建],” Ningxia Social Sciences [宁夏社会科学], no. 4 (2025), p.20. Liu frames the observation as a persisting condition of the reform era, and relates it to the debate over the philosophy textbook system (在反思哲学教科书体系的过程中).

[9] Yang Guorong [杨国荣], “Constructing China’s Autonomous Philosophical Knowledge System: A Possible Path [建构中国自主的哲学知识体系：可能之道],” Philosophical Analysis [哲学分析]14, no. 2 (2023): 160. Yang warns symmetrically against the opposite extreme of treating Western doctrines as a universal standard.