The Communist Party of China (CPC) is giving Chinese scientists more power to allocate research grants following unrest in the scientific community over the CPC's tight control over funding and high-level embezzlement of these funds.

The central committee of the CPC and the State Council, China's Cabinet, this week issued recommendations for government agencies overseeing research and development (R&D) funding doled out by the central government. The CPC streamlined the way public funds are assigned to R&D in a bid to foster innovation and weed out corruption.

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Under the new guidelines, scientists and researchers who lead R&D programs will have a greater say when deciding on direct expenses linked to key decisions such as staffing, purchasing equipment and international cooperation projects.

Research facilities and universities are required to craft their own policies in accordance with the state recommendations by the end of August.

This move followed protests by the scientific community over red-tape and the lack of transparency in how research funds are allocated. The catalyst for this change seems to have been a story by two of the China's top scientists published in September 2010 criticizing the CPC and saying "doing good research is not as important as schmoozing with powerful bureaucrats and their favorite experts."

Currently, research funding decisions are mostly left to communist bureaucrats or administrators at government-run research facilities such as universities with little expertise in science and technology. Inevitably, this practice has seen money doled out to the wrong people.

Outlandish government embezzlement of R&D funds was exposed in 2014 when 70 officials overseeing research projects in Guangdong were implicated in bribery and embezzlement scandal involving $7.5 million.

China's R&D spending grew by over 10 percent annually on average in recent years. Spending rose to $196 billion in 2014 from $106 billion in 2010, said the National Bureau of Statistics. Spending for 2014 was some two percent of GDP, which is low compared to R&D spending in many western countries.

TagsCommunist Party of China, Research and Development, R&D