Introduction

China’s economic reform has attracted worldwide attention, and with it, political system reforms that push for scientific and democratic decision-making have also advanced fruitfully. Western observers used to hold biased ideas against relations between experts and political authorities in China. They believe that leaders in China are short of legitimacy during decision-making due to the absence of democratic election. Post-modern knowledge utilisation theory began to develop in the middle of the 1990s. Such a post-modern theory emphasises how the language or discourse can be expressed as policy proposals and how the issues and solutions can be understood by a target audience. Theory on knowledge utilisation plays a critical guiding role in the process by which experts push decision makers to develop and implement relevant policies through the utilisation of their research results. When China entered the period of the reform and opening-up policy, Western scholars expressed a wave of concern about the policy process in China.