Seeing Like a Bureaucrat – The Process of ‘the Long-term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology for 1956–1967’ and the ‘Interactive Expertise’ of Bureaucrats –

The aim of this study is to demonstrate that the formation process of The Long-term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology for 1956–1967 (1956–1967年科學技術發展遠景規劃, hereafter the “Twelve-Year Plan”), announced in 1956, played a decisive role in enabling scientists within the Chinese Academy of Sciences (中國科學院, CAS) to retain an exceptional status and continue their research activities during the Anti-Rightist Campaign in mid-twentieth-century China. As China’s first comprehensive science and technology policy document, its drafting process involved not only high-level central officials but also field-level bureaucrats dispatched by the Party to CAS. These working-level cadres were initially unfamiliar with science. However, through sustained dialogue and cooperation with scientists, they gradually acquired what may be called “interactional expertise”—the capacity to understand scientific language and concerns and to translate them into politically legible policy formulations. In collaborating with scientists, these cadres emerged as the often “unrecognized” architects behind the successful planning of the Twelve-Year Plan. More importantly, the trust and cooperative relationships they cultivated with scientists provided a degree of protection for scientific personnel during the politically repressive years after 1957. By reexamining the formation of the Twelve-Year Plan through the lens of those who were “seeing like a bureaucrats,” this study offers a new historical interpretation of the relationship between science and politics under Mao, and highlights the bureaucratic dynamics that sustained scientific continuity amid political rupture.