Are Chinese universities abolishing the ‘iron rice bowl’?

(Edited and refined by Bai Kelei, with the assistance of AI translation.)

The culture of relentless competition in China’s workplaces has spread to the ivory tower. Over the past week, an internal document from Shanghai’s Tongji University circulated online unsettled the academic community.

The Notice on the Appointment, Assessment and Renewal of Professional and Technical Positions for 2026 issued on 31 July clarified that professional and technical appointments will be subjected to regular assessments, with the university no longer offering permanent appointments. Pre-tenure faculty will be assessed every three years, while existing tenured faculty will undergo a full assessment every six years and an interim review every three years. Those who fail may face pay cuts, demotion, reassignment or even dismissal.

This means Tongji University will no longer offer tenure to newly-hired faculty, while its tenured staff must now undergo an assessment every three years. Put simply, university lecturers no longer have an “iron rice bowl” — a job for life.

The news sparked heated debate online. One netizen quipped, “Tongji postgraduates had better choose their supervisors carefully, in case they leave before you graduate.”

Tongji’s move to dismantle the iron rice bowl has polarised public opinion. Supporters say it could curb complacency and shirking among tenured professors, and rejuvenate the faculty through uniform assessment standards.

The dilemma of short-term assessment

However, critics pointed out that Tongji’s best-known disciplines, including architecture and civil engineering, require years of investments before yielding results. Three-yearly assessments could force academics to forsake long-term research in pursuit of short-term results, or even churn out papers of little value.

Tongji was recently embroiled in an academic misconduct scandal. Back in April, academic fraud whistle-blower Geng Hongwei alleged that a paper published in Nature by Wang Ping, dean of Tongji’s School of Life Sciences and Technology, and his team contained fabricated data and images. The paper was retracted after an investigation, while Wang was removed from his post and demoted.

Zhang Taisu, a professor at Yale Law School, sharply criticised Tongji’s abolition of tenure in a recent Weibo post, drawing parallels with the post-tenure reviews of professors that have become common in recent years at universities in some Republican-led US states. He described both as “short-sighted moves by sub-standard institutions in decline”.

Zhang wrote that original research rarely emerges under constant assessment because researchers often need to take substantial academic risks. Continuous reviews would leave Tongji unable to attract top talent or obtain high-quality work from its existing faculty. He said, “Such myopic behaviour, unless driven by undisclosed administrative or financial difficulties, amounts to a very foolish act of self-harm.”

Incomplete figures compiled by several education websites show that Tongji University’s budget for 2026 is around 17.163 billion RMB (US$2.55 billion), down 1.9% from the previous year but still among the top ten largest university budgets in China.

Of greater concern to academics is whether other Chinese universities will follow suit if even a leading and relatively well-funded institution like Tongji could abolish tenure because of financial pressures.

Sanlian Lifeweek, a Chinese weekly, reported recently that research funding is one of the metrics used to assess university subject ranking and performance. Local universities struggle to compete with leading institutions for government grants and must instead seek funding from companies and public institutions to meet their targets. As a result, some academics at local universities must not only teach and conduct research, but also find ways to raise money for their institutions. At times, they may even need to pay out of their own pockets.

The report quoted Fan Xiudi, director of Tongji University’s Education Evaluation Research Centre, as saying that over the past two years, universities have increasingly been competing over funding. To boost budgets, many have apportioned funding targets to individual schools and faculties. This is also partly linked to shrinking government allocations in recent years, which have forced universities to raise more money themselves.

Aligning national strategic priorities and needs of academia

Paradoxically, officials from China’s Ministry of Finance said at a press conference late last month that the central government had made science and technology a priority for funding this year. The central government’s budget for basic research rose 16.3% from the previous year, helping to increase basic research spending nationwide from 55.5 billion RMB in 2013 to 277.8 billion RMB in 2025. The proportion of research and development (R&D) expenditure dedicated to basic research reached a record 7.08%, up from 4.68%.

In early August, Chinese authorities invited experts from various fields to the annual Beidaihe summer retreat. In state media releases, basic research rose from third place among the key fields listed in 2025 to first this year, signalling the leadership’s growing emphasis on it. Yet, the defining features of basic research are its long time horizon, high failure rates and unpredictable results.

Where is the increased R&D funding from, and who is getting a share? Why has the leadership’s emphasis on basic research failed to give researchers the backing needed to pursue long-term work?

After Chinese mathematicians Wang Hong and Deng Yu were awarded the Fields Medal late last month, a series of discussions emerged over the differences between the Chinese and overseas education systems, including whether the two could still have won the prize had they remained in China. This week’s controversy over Tongji’s faculty reforms inevitably raises another question: if Wang and Deng returned to China, could they still devote themselves to academic research amid the pressures of three-yearly assessments and raising funds for their university?

The same logic applies not only to long-established disciplines such as mathematics, but also to the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. At a meeting with investors in May, DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng emphasised, “A more relaxed environment is needed for research. Putting researchers under immense pressure will not produce results.”

Amid the protracted China-US tech rivalry, Chinese policymakers increasingly value research that can take a long time to bear fruit. But in practice, especially at universities, researchers may face vastly different circumstances. Staff at some institutions or companies may be able to spend years researching and tackling challenges in a particular field. But amid economic pressures and tight public finances, some university academics also face the near-term pressure of three-yearly assessments. This apparent contradiction highlights the complex realities of academic research in China, where the disconnect between national strategic priorities and ground conditions in academia remains difficult to erase.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “当大学老师也难保“铁饭碗””.

Related: Why Xi gathered China’s top scientists in Beidaihe | Can China’s slowing economy sustain its tech ambitions?