Drawing on a decade of editorial practice, this article examines
Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning (CJLPP) as a representative case of triadic co-production of knowledge and management involving a publisher, the academic community, and government agencies. It argues that the journal’s establishment was enabled by three converging shifts in the early twenty-first century: the reorientation of China’s national language authorities from direct administration to guidance and services; the expansion of linguistic inquiry from structural and theoretical linguistic approaches to the broader domain of language use in social life; and the publisher’s strategic move to develop applied language-related programs in response to these trends. The article further analyzes how the journal has been organized and governed through a functional division of labor. Academia serves as the primary engine of knowledge production, assembling a core editorial team and articulating editorial principles and institutional arrangements. The government functions as the anchor of governance orientation, helping ensure that scholarly agendas remain aligned with national development priorities. The publisher operates as the central hub for knowledge translation, strengthening top-level design and ensuring efficient execution across key editorial processes. Together, these actors constitute a knowledge-production community driven simultaneously by epistemic logics and political/governance logics: academia as the “engine”, government as the “steering wheel”, and the publisher as the “converter” or integrative platform. This configuration illustrates a form of managed knowledge production in which scholarly autonomy is maintained while being substantively embedded within a broader framework of state governance.