The truth behind China’s ‘world-leading’ scientific research

China has for the first time become the world’s leading producer of high-quality scientific research, according to a Japanese study.

The country now surpasses the United States in terms of the number of most cited papers, a crucial indicator of research impact, according to a report by Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP).

The milestone “provides fresh evidence that China’s scholarship, known for its burgeoning quantity, is catching up in quality as well”, said the academic journal Science.

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“People are writing off China, [saying] they’re putting out a lot of stuff but it’s not good quality,” Caroline Wagner, who studies science policy and innovation at Ohio State University, told Science. “That’s just short-sighted.”

How good is the research?

Over the past two decades, Chinese researchers have become “some of the world’s most prolific publishers of scientific papers”, said the Financial Times.

The paper reported that, according to calculations by the Institute for Scientific Information, a US-based research body, China produced 3.7 million papers in 2021 – 23% of the global total. US researchers published 4.4 million papers.

China is also “climbing the ranks” in how frequently its research is cited, which is regarded by some scholars as the primary means for determining the quality of research. For the first time, it has become the global leader on this metric, although as the FT pointed out, “that figure was flattered by multiple references to Chinese research that first sequenced the Covid-19 virus genome”.

Do some dispute China’s standing?

According to Science, NISTEP’s approach to its study has divided scholars. Many of the articles the institute considered have multiple authors – a problem it resolved by deploying a method called “fractional counting” to properly apportion the credit.

This means that “if, for example, one French and three Swedish institutions contributed to a paper, France received 25% of the credit and Sweden 75%”, Science explained.

Using that measure, China ended up with 27.2% of the most cited papers published from 2018 to 2020, the US had 24.9% and the UK was third with 5.5%.

But many scholars say this approach overstates the importance of some countries. Cao Cong, a science policy scholar at the University of Nottingham’s campus in Ningbo, China, said: “The question is who – the Chinese or their international collaborators – led the studies.”

Regardless of how you cut it, China’s advance is “remarkable”, NISTEP insisted. Deploying the same fractional system of counting, the country would have only come 13th in the global rankings just two decades ago, the institute said.

What happens next?

China is not the only country to make scientific strides in recent years, said Ohio State’s Caroline Wagner on The Conversation, but the country’s rise “has been particularly dramatic”.

US officials worry the development could “shift the global balance of power”, given that “scientific capability is intricately tied to both military and economic power”, Wagner said. Some people in Washington believe they now have to “make a choice about how to respond”, she added.

For his part, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been “keen to encourage the belief that his country will become the world’s dominant superpower”, said The Spectator. However, “China’s attempts to take the lead when it comes to numerous scientific and technological advancements have so far had very mixed results”.

Its Covid vaccines, for example, “were nothing like as good as the western ones”, the magazine said, and “China’s progress in military technology is also in doubt”, with questions over the efficacy of its much-vaunted hypersonic missiles, among other criticisms.

According to Wagner on The Conversation, America’s concerns about China’s scientific rise are “rooted in a nationalistic view that doesn’t wholly map onto the global endeavour of science”.

Academic research today is “in large part driven by the exchange of ideas and information”, Wagner. Consequently, “with many global issues facing the planet – like climate change, to name just one – there may be wisdom in looking at this new situation as not only a threat, but also an opportunity”.