A Research on the Evolution of Science and Technology Policy in China

Direct cooperation between the central and local governments in scientific and technological areas- what this article calls "Province-Ministry Science and Technology Cooperation" (PMSTC) plays a significant role in areas of contemporary policy such as education, disaster response, economic development, social services, and environmental protection. Authors illustrate this evolution from the perspective of science and technology policy development. This paper proposes the China's science and technology management mode, which has gone through two periods: the period of central governmental command oriented mode and the period of governmental conduct mode. The latter period can be further subdivided into three stages: reform stage, deepening reform stage, and province-ministry cooperation stage (also called the "science and technology governance" stage). Finally, authors concluded the paper with factors caused this evolution, namely, 1) the establishment of a partnership between the central and local governments, which is the prerequisite for province-ministry science and technology cooperation (PMSTC), 2) some scientific and technological affairs with the characteristics of the quasi public goods are the objective basis for PMSTC, 3) the scarcity, dispersion and waste of Chinese technological resources are the practical requirement for PMSTC.