Today, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) simultaneously released on their official websites the list of newly elected academicians for 2025: 73 added to CAS and 71 to CAE, 144 in total. Ranging from mathematics and physics to life sciences, from materials to energy, the list, as always, is seen as a fresh mapping of the nation’s scientific landscape. Yet behind the applause and congratulations, familiar debates resurface: Can such a complex and solemn selection process truly insulate itself from external influence? When university presidents, research-institute directors, and corporate technology executives once again appear on the roster, the overlap between “scholarly contribution” and “organizational power” inevitably becomes a topic of discussion. The academicianship election should be a moment of honor for the scientific community, yet within the realities of China’s institutional soil, it takes on a more complicated shape. And that complexity is precisely the starting point for understanding China’s academician system—and why it operates in a logic completely different from that of the United States.
The Chinese Model: State Honor, Entangled Interests, and “Metricized Scholarship”
If the final list resembles a results map, then the mechanism behind it is more like a machine slowly operating in the shadows. This year’s CAS–CAE selection process began in April and lasted nearly a full year: nomination, qualification review, external blind review, disciplinary-group deliberation, and final voting. Each step is rigorous and intricate, seemingly designed to use layer-upon-layer procedures to guard the boundary of academic integrity. “From spring to late autumn, the entire disciplinary division is in a kind of invisible tension,” said a research-management official familiar with the process. In the academies’ published disciplinary codes, the “Eight Prohibitions”—no canvassing, no lobbying, no exchange of interests—are ritually repeated incantations. Yet even with tight procedures, it is difficult for observers to ignore a constantly converging and radiating force beneath the system: in China, the title of academician is far more than an honor.
This force emerges as early as the nomination stage. On paper, the two nomination channels—through existing academicians or via recognized academic societies—look straightforward. But in the seniority-based reality, more actors often join the relay: university academic committees, research-institute Party committees, industry supervisory bodies, and local governments, all quietly push candidates forward through an invisible web. When the candidate list is unveiled, familiar institutions always appear: “Double First-Class” universities, central-enterprise laboratories, key state labs; and familiar roles—university presidents, institute directors, corporate executives. Because one academician often means access to project channels, fiscal preference, and disciplinary influence, some organizations treat “producing academicians” as an annual KPI. As a result, a widely cited observation circulates within the scientific community: once a corporate executive becomes an academician, their enterprise’s government subsidies and project funding often increase significantly. This is not a conspiracy theory, but a natural echo of how the system operates: the academicianship has long been converted into a resource, and nomination is merely the entry point into that resource network.
As the process enters peer review, the shape of that force grows more complicated. The selection guidelines emphasize priorities: major national projects, “chokepoint” technologies, and strategic emerging industries. These criteria are valid and reflect national needs, but in actual evaluations they become intertwined with a second set of implicit goals: regional balance, system-level considerations, institutional expectations, disciplinary traditions, and even tacit understandings between local governments and ministries. If a candidate is simultaneously a research leader, a major-project director, and the top administrator of their unit, the boundary between academic merit and managerial power can easily collapse into a fuzzy silhouette. Engineering contributions may be supported by voluminous documentation but often blur individual versus collective credit. Industrial performance indicators show numerical gains and losses, but do not necessarily reflect scientific depth. Over time, a quiet sentiment grows within the scientific community: “Those who know how to operate the system get closer to becoming academicians.” Original contributions always matter, but in the crevices of competing objectives, they are often not the decisive factor.
The final gate appears the strongest—and the most frustrating. In an effort to curb rent-seeking, the academies have tightened administrative oversight: multi-tier reviews by the presidium, Party-leadership approval of valid candidates, periodic disciplinary notices, and public disclosure for reporting. These measures have indeed made the process more standardized, yet they also transform the selection into a “comprehensive negotiation” among the state, local governments, institutions, and the academic community. Sometimes, the stricter the discipline, the more clearly it reveals the flexible spaces embedded in the system. Administrative authority, as the ultimate reviewing force, safeguards political and ethical boundaries on the one hand, but also reinforces the public perception that in today’s scientific system, academicians are not merely scientists—they are markers of state resource allocation. Under such conditions, the “shadow of corruption” becomes a structural fate rather than the consequence of individual behavior.
The U.S. Model: How a Closed Scientific Community Shrinks the Space for Conflicts of Interest
The U.S. academy system consists of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and National Academy of Medicine (NAM). But unlike China, their elections are “quiet to an unbelievable degree.” In April this year, NAS released the names of 120 new members, and NAE and NAM each elected over a hundred. Yet in the preceding months, there were no public candidate lists, no institutional mobilization, and no media tracking. Many elected members know nothing about the process until they receive an acceptance email. This low profile is not indifference, but a long-standing institutional tradition. Although the academies frequently advise the federal government, they are legally private nonprofit organizations; roughly 70% of their funding comes from foundations and private donations. Governing boards rotate regularly, leaders do not serve for life, and independent audits are standard. This governance independence ensures that “academician” in the U.S. remains a symbolic academic honor, not a lever for resources or administrative power.
Operationally, the U.S. academies form a highly autonomous “closed peer community.” Entry is extremely narrow: only existing members may nominate; candidates cannot self-nominate; universities, research institutes, local governments, or corporations have no formal channels to intervene. Each member may nominate only a limited number of candidates annually; NAS bylaws even specify that influencing more than three candidates in a given year is a violation. Such deliberate restrictions directly limit the spread of personal networks, making the process a slow internal renewal of the scientific community rather than an opportunity for organizational or capital mobilization.
The review process reflects a “decentralized” logic. NAS maintains 31 disciplinary sections; NAE and NAM are also subdivided. All review materials are anonymized; reviewers may not contact candidates or attempt to identify them from their dossiers. After initial evaluation, materials are sent across divisions for cross-review, focusing on consistency of reasoning and appropriateness of citation metrics rather than technical details. Beginning in 2025, some divisions are piloting AI-assisted quantitative tools to aggregate citation distributions, cross-field impact, and citation quality—aimed at reducing biases such as “hot-topic chasing” or preference for familiar names. The process is closed, but harder to manipulate than more open procedures.
Most distinctive is the rigor of conflict-of-interest rules. Every reviewer must disclose collaborations, mentorship ties, business relationships, institutional affiliations, and funding links with any candidate; any substantial connection triggers automatic recusal. Violations are career-ending—lifetime disqualification, reputational collapse, academic ostracism. This year, a “near-certain” candidate from Harvard Medical School was removed because they were under investigation regarding research funding—even though the investigation was unresolved. The review committee stated: “Any unresolved association could compromise the community’s judgment.” In the U.S. scientific ecosystem, the academicianship does not bring grants, administrative rank, or institutional resources; few would risk their reputation just to “help an associate.” Academic credibility is the core asset.
Underlying all this is the principle codified in the 1863 Congressional charter of the National Academy of Sciences: science must be governed by the scientific community itself, not by administrative authorities. A closed community is not inherently fair, but when entry is narrow, power is dispersed, conflicts of interest are tightly controlled, and the incentive structure makes rule-breaking far riskier than beneficial, the result is a stable institutional shell. This is why U.S. academy elections, though lacking drama, maintain enduring global credibility: they rely not on moral purity, but on interference-resistant design.
A Few Additional Words
Debates about reform have never ceased in China’s scientific world, resurfacing after each election cycle like dust stirred up again. Increasingly, people believe that real change may not lie in adding more procedures or more disciplinary rules, but in quietly shifting the system’s center of gravity back to the scientific community itself—shortening power chains, distancing administrative intervention, and returning nomination and evaluation to those who truly understand the language of the discipline. The academicianship should be the natural extension of a scholarly life, not the product of bargaining among institutions, regions, or ministries.
A subtler but more crucial path is to loosen the tight binding between the academicianship and resources, status, and opportunities. As long as the title can alter a university’s ranking, affect a city’s budget, or steer a major project, it cannot remain institutionally lightweight. Restoring the academicianship to its original purpose—marking scholarly contribution—requires a genuinely strict conflict-of-interest regime and a resource-allocation system that is more transparent and verifiable—not based on titles, but on the work itself.
Ultimately, what people care about is not who gets elected in any given year, nor how loud the external controversy is, but whether the academician system can still serve as a symbol of the scientific community—unburdened by excessive functionality and unhindered by the gaps of the system. China’s reform path does not need to replicate the American model, but it must confront a simple yet difficult question: Only when the academicianship is no longer a “resource gateway” but merely an “academic marker” can the system return from heavy to clear. From that moment on, scientists’ names may finally be remembered for what they should be remembered for—science, and science alone.