China aims to become the world’s leading science power by 2050. The country’s political leadership want world-class universities, key laboratories, first-class disciplines and breakthrough discoveries to pave that way. Xi Jinping calls science a cosmopolitan and globally governed endeavor and plegdes that Chinese scientists will be participating in solving humanity’s urgent common problems. At the same time, a trend towards more nationally-grounded and domestically-oriented academia is observable in the People’s Republic of China (PRC): scientists and scholars are called upon to tell the "China story,” to develop "theories with Chinese characteristics,” and to increasingly publish in Chinese (formats). The Communist Party has strengthed its own role in institutions of higher education and research and the PRC, like other countries, increasingly seeks to securitize research data which further complicates international collaboration, among other things.

In this paper in progress, I trace these paradox trends and thereby seek to map the complex incentive structure that currently shapes the working environment for scientist and scholars in the PRC.