Title in Chinese: 中國社會科學院 (zhōngguó shèhuì kēxuéyuàn)
Established: 1977
Headquarters: 5 Jianguomennei Street, Beijing, 100732, China
Website: casseng.cssn.cn (archive 2019)
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), described as the “top think tank in Asia”, is China’s highest academic research organisation in the fields of philosophy and social sciences. It is affiliated with the State Council and its since its foundation in the 1970s its management have been closely integrated into the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the highest echelons of China’s political structures. CASS has been concerned with “pushing forward” the popularity of Marxism in minority areas such as Tibet since the 1960s.
The Bureau of International Cooperation (BIC), an administrative arm of CASS, has delineated the goals of CASS as a research centre for: Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory; economic reform and development; socialist democracy; China’s legal system and social development; China’s civilisation and socialist culture; and the theory of international issues and strategy. The basic tasks of CASS, as set out by BIC, include “actively conducting countermeasures”; adhering to the policy of “making the past serve the present and foreign things serve China”; critically carrying on the “excellent cultural heritage of the Chinese nation”; arming people’s minds with scientific theory to “raise ideological and moral levels” and “improve scientific and cultural quality”; and to “train the talents of highly-qualified management personnel.”
Several key leading figures in CASS, past and present, as well as numerous graduates, have played important roles in Himalayan affairs through their involvement in China’s Tibet policies and contributions to Chinese soft power. Former President Chen Kuiyuan served as vice Party chief of the Tibet Autonomous Region and secretary of the CCP Tibet Committee from 1992-2000. This period saw on the one hand saw an intense crackdown on religion inside Tibet, as well as the inception of strategies to project China’s influence into the Tibetan diaspora, for example through the appointment, indoctrination and later exfiltration into India of the young Tibetan religious leader Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. Another former CASS President, Li Tieying, was serving on the State Council when he personally installed the 11th Panchen Lama in Xigaze in 1995.
CASS operates a provincial branch in Lhasa, the Tibet Autonomous Region Academy of Social Sciences (TASS). One of its publications entitled “Resolutely implement the regional party committee arrangements for the deployment of the Standing Committee” explains the objective of TASS to “earnestly implement the requirements of the CPC Central Committee” and “hold high the great banner socialism with Chinese characteristics”. TASS plays an important functional role of the regional Party committee and aims for “the development of innovation with Chinese characteristics.” TASS has attracted students from mainland China and overseas, including Taiwan. Two Taiwanese TASS graduates, Chen Yu-chuen and Liu Dongdong, have served as the Chinese translation secretariat for Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje both during his time in Tibet as well as in India and abroad. Both of these individuals are executives of the Hwayue Foundation, established by the pro-reunification Taiwanese politician Chen Li-an (the former being his youngest son).
Another important department of CASS is the Institute of World Religions (IWR), which co-hosts “Buddhism Online.” In one account of IWR’s history, it is stated that “we accepted each year special tasks commissioned or distributed by the departments of the State Council concerned, which were in most cases investigation reports on certain hot religious issues.”
In 2017, CASS established the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on the basis of merging the graduate school of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the undergraduates of the China Youth College of Politics. Its sprawling campus at Liangxiang Higher Education Park is located in Beijing's Fangshan District.
