Shifting dual promotion pressures and research trade-offs among tenure-track STEM faculty in China: a theoretical framework and empirical evidence

Globally adopted yet locally reshaped, the tenure-track system varies widely across countries. In China, recent reforms have intensified up-or-out pressures on early-career faculty, particularly in STEM fields characterized by intense research competition, strong funding dependence, and diverse forms of scholarly output. Using personnel and research output data from pre-tenure STEM faculty at a leading Chinese research university, collected through Python-based web crawling, this study examines the evolution of two forms of promotion pressure during the six-year probationary period: threshold pressure, reflecting minimum institutional requirements, and competitive pressure, driven by peer comparison. Results showed that threshold pressure dominated the first three years, whereas competitive pressure became more salient in later stages. Threshold pressure primarily increased national research project counts and funding while shifting research effort away from publications and patents. Competitive pressure boosted SCI/SSCI publications but had limited influence on other outputs and was associated with lower levels of international collaboration. Both pressures exhibited an inverted U-shaped relationship with citation impact, suggesting that moderate levels of pressure were most conducive to scholarly influence. These findings highlight important trade-offs in China’s tenure-track system and underscore the need for discipline-specific and long-cycle evaluation mechanisms to support sustainable academic development.