In short, the RCCC seeks to establish itself as a world-class research and training facility for the social sciences.

With its new expanded mission, the RCCC has also increased its capabilities and activities. Given its relatively small size, the Center has developed strong survey research facilities. The RCCC has the capability of conducting local, regional and national surveys in China. In 1995, the RCCC launched its flagship project, the Beijing Area Study (BAS), an annual survey with a probability sample of 1,200 Beijing urban residents. Since 1995 the RCCC has conducted on its own a number of academic surveys that are diverse in terms of design, content, scale, and geographic location. The Center also works with government agencies at the national and local levels conducting large-scale surveys on a variety of policy relevant issues.

In addition to the traditional face-to-face paper pencil interview, the RCCC now has capability and facility to conduct surveys by CATI (computer assisted telephone interviews). The Center has also established a focus group lab and trained an elite group of moderators. In recent years, the RCCC has developed a new sampling method, “GPS/GIS Assistant Area Sampling” with Professor Pierre Landry at Yale University, which is particularly advantaged at correcting the bias caused by coverage errors in list-based samples.

Besides survey research projects, the RCCC is involved in other non-survey related research, such as an oral history and multi-media project of the Cultural Revolution, an anthropological research on social changes in rural China after 1949, an intervention experimental study on laid-off workers, etc.

In conjunction with development of its survey research facilities, the RCCC has established a training program in social science methodology, and furthered its interdisciplinary cooperation. The Beijing Area Study serves as a practical vehicle for teaching the various aspects of social survey research. The Center has also invited both domestic and international scholars to come to Peking University to share their experience and knowledge with respect to research methodology. Supported by the Ford Foundation, the Center sponsored a Joint Training Program on Research Methodology with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, in 1997-2003.

The RCCC staff is both highly motivated and professional. They are all technically competent in survey research methodology. The Center's senior staff has all had intensive training overseas, many of them at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. The junior staff has all been trained in research methodology that is otherwise rarely available to Chinese undergraduates and graduate students.

The RCCC is an independent and autonomous research center. While the Center is formally under the auspices of Peking University, it is to a great extent independent of the University administration, enjoying substantial autonomy in making its own academic, personnel, and budgetary decisions. The Center is completely self-financed, mainly through institutional academic grants from, e.g., the Ford Foundation, the Smith Richard Foundations, the Asia Foundation, the Japan Foundation, and international organizations like UNDP, WHO, etc., as well as from other domestic sources.