‘Unveiling the list and assuming control’ is a scitech funding method to raise efficiency. A two-step selection protocol, it alludes to Chinese traditional knight-errantry, which featured
- jiebang 揭榜, drawing up a public list of challenges
- guashuai 挂帅, identifying a captain via open competition between champions
The point is to drive scitech via open competition, setting challenges and rewards. To take part, teams sign 'military oaths’, define milestones, and commit to prioritising the challenge. Under the motto ‘let whoever can, do’ (谁能干就让谁干), there are few formal limits. Projects are evaluated by ‘real end users’, and rewarded based on practical results (curbing the ‘entry’ focus, in favour of ‘output’).
Raised by Xi Jinping 习近平 in 2016 (and again in early 2020 in relation to COVID), the term’s inclusion in the 14th 5-year plan made it a Party buzz-phrase. Forty ‘National Key R&D Projects’ called for by MoST (Ministry of Science and Technology) in 2021 initiated a subcategory for such ‘open competitions’, awarding C¥2 bn, some 11 percent of the total amount.