2w ago

China Displaces U.S. as Global Leader in Research - FPIF

The latest Nature Index rankings reveal an astonishing trend: nine of the world’s top 10 research institutions are now Chinese

To fully appreciate China’s meteoric rise, one must look back at the academic landscape a decade ago. When the Nature Index Global rankings were first released in 2014, only eight Chinese universities made it into the top 100. Today, that number has more than quintupled, with 42 Chinese institutions now ranking among the world’s best

One of the most notable policy shifts has been the move away from publication-based evaluation metrics. Previously, Chinese academics were incentivized to publish as many papers as possible, often at the expense of quality. However, recent reforms have introduced a more rigorous peer-review system that prioritizes impactful and innovative research over sheer volume. This shift has resulted in a significant improvement in the credibility and global influence of Chinese scientific output.

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schizoidman @lemm.ee

2w ago

China Displaces U.S. as Global Leader in Research - FPIF

fpif.org /china-displaces-u-s-as-global-leader-in-research/

36 comments

Gee, who could have seen this coming
- Americans at least the ones on YouTube (not a fair Demographic I admit) seem in utter denial about China surpassing them in things.
  Its Taiwan I feel bad for as I don't think the US is even capable of saving it anymore and it looks like China may have noticed.
  
  The US was still #1 in manufacturing but China was getting close to overtaking us. I'm certain they will now.

I'm gonna be real here, just Realpolitik-wise from the perspective of "the West" sans the USA - China is currently proving that they are simply more reliable in geopolitics and even economically, and that is just damn important, even in an adversarial relationship. It isn't even because they are a de-facto dictatorship, Russia is one too, and Russia is a mad dog. They just managed to keep their shit mostly together so far, still riding out their massive growth spurt. Even human rights abuses outside of Realpolitik don't seem as the argument they were: internationally, the US has always had a more greyish record anyhow. But now, considering the US is quickly doing its best to catch up in domestic tyranny, that argument seems to be going fast, too.
Sadly, I don't have huge hopes for China to be a proper "better" hegemon globally, if that should be what ultimately happens - they are facing crises of their own, and have been dabbling in their own brands of economic imperialism, and at least the way their military is gearing up contains a lot of stuff usually used for military imperialism as well.
- The US has been a brutal empire to anyone outside the supplicant, mostly white European, nations of the West.
  The kicker is the US has no one to blame for it's decline but itself. It has descended into a techno-military industrial oligarchy addicted to Eurodollar deficit spending and cheap credit. It burned up the global order it created in pointless wars in the Middle East and supporting it's genocidal settler colony in Palestine.
  Once countries transition away from using the dollar it is really fucked.

Please, oh please do or do not research in Chinese. I'm too old to give a flying fuck. But it would be hilarious if suddenly the world had to learn Chinese to be able to use the research results.
- I'd like to learn Chinese (which one though?), but I'm afraid I never will. LLMs may help with translation, though.
  
  Mandarin is the most accessible and widely spoken, Cantonese is good if you want to spend a lot of time in the south. Good luck if you want to learn one of the hundreds of other dialects, maybe make a friend from one of the places and have them help you.

Are we great again, yet?
- Trump just scrapped the commie department of education so free market capitalism can once again save Americs. Education will trickle down from above.

One of the issues here is that being a Chinese paper in any field is still the most correlated with the paper being faked in some way. So while china is producing a lot of science and good science its also the world leader in garbage fake science too and it needs to get a handle on the problem.
- i rarely hear good research papers out of china, unless its something like botany, or plants,animals that require cooperation with other universities all over the globe. plants because china has a megadivesity of flowers specifically.
- As if that’s not the same for western papers lmao.
  
  not at the rate of china, and fake papers are usually scrutinized more in the us, and they do produce alot of low quality papers, mainly its because PHDs have a hard time getitng jobs, so they have to write dozens of papers before even being noticed by a employer, most of the time its academic employers. it will be hard to get past some scrutiniy, since your papers have to get published on a well respected journal eventually, like nature,,,,etc. other journals journal of new england medicine, lancet, science journal.

Quick, send another billion dollars to israel!
- And deport all the PHDs who criticize it. That'll get us back in the top spot academically.

I think you can remove “in research” from that headline.

Hope this reduces cheating in Chinese scientific literature because China overtaking US academia is a pretty bad sign when to comes to trust academia otherwise.

Is Nature receiving any Chinese propaganda money? In today's world it is worth being skeptical.
In the top 50, Chinese universities are at 12, 13, 36 and 47 in this list

Just don’t research or publish anything that might make the CCP look bad!
- Trump unilaterally declared certain words in research papers would get funding for your research (and even university) revoked.
  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html?unlocked_article_code=1.904.1FgL.3feAf1QvdpOb
  Gift link to the list of words compiled by The NY Times.
  
  Both governments can be terrible yknow
  
  thx for the share
- We don't have room to make these jokes, anymore.
- I know a lot of western researchers working in China and it's an easy problem to avoid if you're studying STEM stuff. For humanities there are basically zero westerners there because it's an absolute minefield to navigate even if you'd like to study pro-chinese fields like Chinese art or even something relatively neutral like music production. I wouldn't trust any paper from China in that regard.

in the us they have same problem, as publishing too many low-quality papers as well. especially when they are trying to get jobs in academia, when i went to one of those "talks, orientation" one researcher at to write 40+papers before even looked at by a university employer. they care more about quantity over quality, basically they see the amount you have written equal to quality of research.(not a PHD myself), also that many in the phd are abandoing thier fields, because of the above issues, plus job prospects. why chinese research isnt trusted, was probably because of thier quality of reasearch, plus they fudge thier results alot too, and they have issue of industrial and research espionage going on blatantly.

36 comments