The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (中國社會科學院), or CASS, is the PRC’s official state research institution in the humanities and social sciences and a vehicle for shaping how China is talked about both at home and abroad. Founded in May 1977 out of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences, the ministry-level body sits under the State Council and counts more than 4,200 staff across 31 institutes and four national high-end think tanks. CASS describes itself as a “theoretical bastion of Marxism” (馬克思主義的理論陣地) and controls 95 academic journals, five publishing houses, the CSSN portal, and three newspapers led by Chinese Social Sciences Today (中國社會科學報), launched on July 1, 2009. The academy is also a key node in the Party’s push for “discourse power” (話語權), an effort to set global agendas framing itself as an alternative to dominant Western narratives. CASS has established 17 overseas China research centers, helped initiate the World Association for China Studies (世界中國學研究聯合會), or WACS, and hosts forums such as the World Conference on China Studies, which aims to build a global academic community for a deeper understanding of China.