Government Involvement and Knowledge Production in China: The Case of University Think Tanks in Shanghai

This article contextualises China’s university think tanks in the history of higher education reforms and proposes that the development of university think tanks is the country’s third attempt of institutional reforms in research. One of the goals of the reform is to rebalance the relationship between government power and knowledge producers. In light of the power–knowledge theory, this article utilises university think tanks in Shanghai as a case to assess how well China’s new-type university think tanks have achieved the goal of rebalancing power–knowledge relations. Findings have shown that resource allocation and interaction mechanism are the two main factors influencing power–knowledge relations.