On August 11, the State Council of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appointed and dismissed state officials, among which Jin Minqing was appointed as the Director of the Contemporary China Research Institute. This institution, responsible for producing CCP’s “national history,” had been without a director for three years.
Public records show that the Contemporary China Research Institute, also known as the Contemporary Institute, is under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences affiliated with the CCP. Its main tasks include researching, compiling, and publishing the national history of the CCP, collecting and editing relevant historical data, participating in the promotion and education of national history, and coordinating national historical research work in various regions and departments.
The former director of the institute was Jiang Hui, who served from December 2018 to April 2022. He was later replaced by Li Zhenghua, who acted as the Deputy Director in charge of the institute’s work. The position of director remained vacant for three years until Jin Minqing assumed the role in 2025.
Jin Minqing, born in 1967 in Luoyang, Henan Province, currently serves as a member of the CCP Committee at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Director of the Contemporary China Research Institute, and Secretary of the Party Committee. In February of this year, he was appointed as the Party Committee Secretary and Chief Editor of the CCP Social Sciences Magazine Press, and later also took on the role of President of the CCP National History Society.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences system has historically been a stronghold of the CCP’s ideology, often filled with far-left figures. For instance, the inaugural President of the National History Society, CCP elder Deng Liqun, was known as the “Left King.”
In a recent interview with CCP state media, Jin Minqing uncommonly criticized the former Chief Editor in a question-and-answer format. He expressed his shock and sadness over discrepancies in the citation verification of three articles published in the January and February 2025 issues of “Chinese Social Science” magazine since he took office.
Jin Minqing emphasized that the editorial issues must be addressed by the new leadership of the magazine, saying, “The new leadership of the magazine cannot and will not avoid handling it.”
The report did not specify the exact errors in the recent issues of “Chinese Social Science,” but Jin Minqing mentioned the need to “ensure the political orientation of the manuscripts.”
Former Chief Editor of “Chinese Social Science,” Fang Jun, born in January 1966 in Changqing, Shandong, took on multiple roles within the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences before assuming the position of Deputy Secretary-General and Director of the Office in 2016. In 2020, he also became the Chief Editor and Party Committee Secretary of the CCP Social Sciences Magazine Press and currently serves as the Deputy Secretary-General of the Academy.
Commentator Li Linyi previously told the Epoch Times that recent incidents within the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences are a manifestation of severe internal struggles within the CCP following ideological bankruptcy and intensified infighting.
In August last year, the Director, Secretary, and Deputy Director of the Economic Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences were all replaced. Hong Kong media reports indicated that the trigger for these changes was the suspicion against Deputy Director Zhu Hengpeng for “opinions contrary to the central authority,” leading to a complete overhaul of the institute’s leadership.
Moreover, in April this year, amid a hardline response from the CCP government to U.S. “reciprocal tariffs,” the Economic Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences announced on April 6 that the “Public Policy Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences” would be dissolved. The center’s official website and platforms were also shut down on the same day, and its WeChat public account was canceled.
It has been suggested that the dissolution of the Public Policy Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was related to criticism of the Chinese government’s retaliatory measures against the U.S. tariff hikes by its contracted researcher He Bin.