Hometown ties or spatial agglomeration of human capital : the selection of scientific elites in China

Abstract

The role of science in propelling social changes, economic growth and improving people's lives has increased strikingly over the recent decades. As the key actors, scientific elites are essential for resource allocation and research output in the development of science. For example, as reported, a Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Fellow, which is generally regarded as the scientific elite in China, is associated with an additional annual funding of US $9.5 million for their affiliations. However, the selection criteria of CAS Fellows are contentious that following particularism or universalism in the existing theoretical discussion, the former of which will bring potential policy problems such as corruption. Hometown ties are identified as one of most important factors to predict the selection. At the same time, the spatial concentration of professional intellectuals in the empire and modern China has been focused for a long time, which will affect the building of hometown ties logically. Although they are two different concepts, the relationship of them will determine that the selection criteria of scientific elites in China is particularistic or universalistic. Thus, this research tries to put these two issues together to analyse the selection mechanism of scientific elites in China and further respond to the existing theoretical argument on the criteria of elite selection. Based on the data collected by the author, this research apply Fixed-effect Logistic Model and Social Network Analysis to exploring the selection consideration of CAS Fellow. There are two main findings. First, both social ties, including hometown tie and academic achievement, could predict the rates of being selected as scientific elites. However, the effect of hometown tie can be mediated by the spatial agglomeration of scientific elites. Second, the pattern of hometown tie is dominated by three significant regional clusters – Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang. It also proved the spatial centration of scientific elites. The analysis of between-centrality presented that the between-centrality of research collaboration network is the most significant factor to affect the selection. KEY WORDS: Scientific elites, Selection, Particularism, Universalism

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology