Chill wind blows through Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

While the government has poured energy and money into developing its science institute, some professors of philosophy and social sciences feel they are under fire.

Government officials lodged accusations in June that the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) - widely regarded as the nation's top think tank - lacks party loyalty and has been "infiltrated by foreign forces".

The academy has long been seen as a stronghold of the mainland's Marxist-Leninist ideologues and a propaganda tool of the Communist Party. But it's also well respected. It is considered one of the world's largest research institutes for social sciences in terms of personnel and physical resources.

More than 4,000 resident scholars - many of them China's best and brightest - work at the academy's 39 research institutes, 180 research centres and one graduate school.

In June the party criticised CASS scholars for not hewing to the party's ideological or political beliefs.

Zhang Yingwei, head of the party's discipline inspection office at CASS, said the academy had been "infiltrated by foreign forces" and "was conducting illegal collusion at politically sensitive times". He also said it had been using academic research as a guise for other purposes and using the internet to promote theories that played into the hands of foreign powers.

Last month, Zhao Shengxuan, vice-president and deputy party chief of CASS, was quoted in the People's Daily as saying the academy would "treat political discipline as a criterion of the utmost importance in the assessment of academics".