On Feb. 9, a launch ceremony for the 12th Outstanding Research Achievements Award and the 1st Young Scholar Award for Outstanding Research Achievements of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) was held in Beijing. The theme of the event was “Commemorating Academic Excellence, Inspiring Academic Youth.” Zhao Rui, vice president of CASS and a member of the leading Party members’ group at CASS, attended and addressed the ceremony.
A scene of the conference Photo: Zhu Gaolei/CSSN
In his remarks, Zhao noted that the Outstanding Research Achievements Award is an important component of CASS’s research evaluation system, serving as a key mechanism for assessing research standards, encouraging academic innovation, and guiding scholarly norms. He added that, over successive rounds of selection, many high-quality works have achieved broad influence in academic circles and have effectively stimulated the initiative and creativity of researchers.
In 2025, while organizing the 12th Outstanding Research Achievements Award, CASS established and conferred the inaugural Young Scholar Award for Outstanding Research Achievements. This concurrent evaluation of the two awards upheld rigorous standards, refined the selection mechanism, and strengthened disciplinary planning, with the aim of balancing dynamism and fairness, giving equal weight to quality and orientation, and coordinating emphasis on key areas with overall development. The initiative represents not only a high-level, large-scale review of research in philosophy and the social sciences, but also a major step by CASS, from a new starting point, to encourage fresh endeavors, cultivate new talent, and further advance the development of China’s independent knowledge system in philosophy and the social sciences.
A display of award-winning works Photo: Zhu Gaolei/CSSN
At the conference, seven authors of award-winning works delivered keynote presentations.
Shi Weimin, a research fellow at the Institute of Political Science and author of the first-prize winning work A History of Political Thought in the Yuan Dynasty, introduced the book’s main arguments. The volume explains the development of political thought in the Yuan Dynasty from four dimensions: changes in ruling concepts, evolutions in political theory, shifts in political attitudes, and transformations of major political ideas. It systematically constructs a complete framework for the intellectual history of Yuan political thought, effectively addressing gaps in the study of Yuan Dynasty history and the history of Chinese political thought.
The original Old History of the Five Dynasties is the only lost work among the Twenty-Four Histories, the official dynastic histories of imperial China, and the existing Qing Dynasty reconstructed edition contains problems such as omissions, misattributions, and textual alterations. In response to these longstanding textual deficiencies, Chen Zhichao, a research fellow at the Institute of Ancient History at CASS, carried forward the academic legacy of his grandfather, Chen Yuan, by undertaking a comprehensive effort to restore and supplement the text. Beginning in the 1990s, he led the collation and supplementation of Old History of the Five Dynasties, and after nearly 30 years of sustained effort, he and his team completed Collated and Supplemented Old History of the Five Dynasties. Drawing on rigorous textual research and original sources, the project recollects, supplements, collates, and verifies the text, providing a reliable textual foundation for the study of the Five Dynasties, and was awarded the First Prize.
Li Xiangyang, a CASS Member and author of the second-prize winning work Economic Analysis of the Belt and Road, explained that, “As a new initiative, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is neither identical to existing regional cooperation mechanisms nor to existing multilateral cooperation mechanisms,” adding that he applies economic approaches to analyze the BRI’s fundamental issues, systematically expounds its development-oriented character, and defines it as a new type of development-oriented regional economic cooperation mechanism.
The second-prize winning work, An Archaeological Study of the Silk Road on the Qinghai–Xizang Plateau, comprehensively collects, systematically analyzes, and closely interprets a large body of new archaeological materials discovered across the Qinghai–Xizang Plateau in recent years, and advances and substantiates the concept of the “Silk Road on the Qinghai–Xizang Plateau.” Tong Tao, a research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology at CASS and the author of the work, explained that it was through the development and utilization of this Silk Road corridor that the Han and Zang peoples, along with other ethnic groups on the plateau, achieved economic and cultural interdependence and mutual exchange, gradually coalescing into an indivisible whole and ultimately becoming an integral component of the Chinese civilization with unity in diversity.
Network industries have reshaped China’s economic landscape over the course of its development and have played an important role in advancing the construction of a unified national market. The third-prize winning work of the Young Scholar Award, Network Effect, Demand Behavior and Market Size—An Empirical Study Based on the Postal and Express Delivery Industry, argues that network effects play a vital role in stimulating demand potential and expanding market scale, and explicitly points out that “involutionary” development should be avoided. Feng Yongsheng, one of the authors and a research fellow at the Institute of Industrial Economics at CASS, observed that accelerating the development of a unified national market, expanding and upgrading consumption, and unlocking the dividends of network effects constitute a strategic cornerstone for promoting high-quality development.
Social morality is an important part of the socialist moral system with Chinese characteristics. Wang Weiguo, a professor at the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and author of the third-prize winning Young Scholar Award work The Way of Public Morality: A Study of the Construction and Governance of Contemporary Chinese Social Morality, argues that advancing the construction and governance of social morality should take the building of long-term mechanisms as foundational work. Ultimately, by establishing long-term mechanisms that are coordinated in content, well supported, and genuinely effective, China can steadily advance these efforts and raise the overall level of social morality.
Ecological progress is a systematic endeavor. It requires addressing not only historically accumulated challenges concerning population, resources, and the environment, but also issues of spatial order arising from production, daily life, and ecological activities. This year’s Third Prize of the Young Scholar Award went to Liu Yan, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Marxism at CASS, for A Study of the Spatial Pattern of Ecological Progress in the New Era. The book highlights the importance of spatial concepts and methods for ecological civilization construction and explores the theoretical implications and practical requirements of building a spatial pattern of ecological progress in the new era.
The Outstanding Research Achievements Award is the highest academic honor established by CASS. Since its launch in 1993, it is conferred once every three years and serves as an important platform for reviewing and showcasing the academy’s overall research strength. The Young Scholar Award for Outstanding Research Achievements announced this time was conferred for the first time, marking a concrete action by CASS to fully implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important statements on youth work and reflecting the high priority attached to youth development by the leading Party members’ group at CASS.
The selection process strictly followed standardized and impartial review procedures. In the end, a total of 96 works received the Outstanding Research Achievements Award and 18 works received the Young Scholar Award. The winning works span major disciplinary fields, including Marxist studies, literature and philosophy, history, economics, social and political science, and international studies.