ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates design institutes’ transformation from public institutions into corporations with modern management systems, and analyzes the appearance and dynamics of individual design studios within institutes. It examines collaborations between foreign design firms and domestic design institutes. Establishing a socialist market economy in the early 1990s considerably accelerated the pace of China’s reform and opening-up process from its post-Tiananmen doldrums. It fundamentally changed Chinese society, giving rise to a wide range of transformations in the social, political, economic, cultural, and ideological spheres. When the new round of reform and experiments began at the turn of the millennium, the majority of state-owned design institutes were transformed from public institutions into privately operated science and technology companies. The reinstitution of the professional system in the mid-1990s laid a solid foundation for subsequent structural reforms of state-owned design institutes, which formed part of the wider reform of state-owned enterprises.
