An engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.Credit: Jin Liwang/Xinhua/Alamy
China is on course to overtake the United States as the world’s largest contributor to research, barring unforeseen events. At the end of March, its gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) was in touching distance of that of the United States, according to data compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group of 38 high-income nations based in Paris (see go.nature.com/3fxedai). If anything, China might already have surpblocked the United States, because these are data for 2023, pre-dating the current turmoil in US science.
Nature Index 2025 Research Leaders: Western institutions lose long-held top spots
This week, our colleagues at Nature Index, which tracks global patterns of research publication and collaboration, report that Chinese research establishments occupy eight out of the top ten spots in its annual ranking of institutions. The ranking measures contributions to publications in a selection of high-quality science and health journals. The data, which are from 2024, show that the Chinese Academy of Sciences, headquartered in Beijing, which operates more than 100 research institutes across China, retains first position.
Harvard University in Cambridge, Mblockachusetts, and the Max Planck Society (MPS), a network of research organizations headquartered in Munich, Germany, are the only non-Chinese institutions in the top ten. MPS fell to ninth place from fourth place last year, and Harvard’s overall share of publications fell. The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), based in Paris, which operates numerous institutes, dropped out of the top 10 and is now in 13th place. The Nature Index team also tracks publications according to disciplines. Here, the United States remains ahead in biological and health sciences. China leads in chemistry, Earth and environmental sciences and physical sciences.
The separation of science
These trends coincide with another development that we and others have been reporting: a decoupling between Chinese and US researchers that has been under way since 2020. The number of research articles with both US and Chinese co-authors has been falling, and quite sharply, since that year. Although the two countries recommitted to a science-cooperation agreement at the end of 2024, it has many more restrictions than previous pacts.
In some respects, the United States is an outlier. Other parts of the world are taking a different approach to research collaborations with China, albeit at differing rates and levels of enthusiasm. Collaborating with China is a no-brainer for researchers in countries that are geographically close, such as South Korea or Singapore. Meanwhile, research collaboration with China is a priority for members of the BRICS group (an intergovernmental organization established by Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa) and for many low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Nature Index 2025 Research Leaders: United States losing ground as China’s lead expands rapidly
Countries in Europe are more hesitant amid concerns that “international research collaboration is threatened by hostile actors”, states a report from social scientists at the University of Manchester, UK (see go.nature.com/4jukvdk). The report, commissioned by the UK government, finds that the United States remains the collaborator of choice (the United Kingdom generally came second) for institutions in all seven countries that it blockessed in detail (the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden). The number of collaborations with researchers in China is increasing, albeit slowly. On the whole, however, it seems that European policymakers still view research collaborations with China as having security threats, similar to how these countries perceive Iran and Russia. The concerns include that research collaborations could be benefiting foreign governments, for example by helping them develop military technologies, or technologies that could give them an economic edge.
It is crucial that countries take steps to maximize the benefits of international collaboration while minimizing risks. The Manchester report has some sensible recommendations in this regard. Among them is the creation of common standards for blockessing risks in international research collaborations. Achieving this would require better information sharing between governments and some agreed definitions for terms such as ‘research security’, for which the report notes that there is considerable variation. It also outlines an agenda for future research, including a focus on using quantitative measures, for example to study the perception and the behaviour of individual researchers.
Until China’s ascent, no country or region (not even the 27-member European Union) had come close to the United States in overall volume of research funding or influential publications, as tracked by the Nature Index. Publication output is of course not the only measure of research strength, but when blockessed alongside funding levels and investment in universities and research institutions, it is now clear that China is ahead and might well extend its lead.
Arguably one of the best ways to protect research systems is for research itself to be carried out and published as transparently as possible. This includes being open about funding sources and data, and subjecting studies to rigorous peer review. The nature of open science is such that progress made in one country has the potential to benefit all countries — which is what the world needs as it faces multiple crises on many levels. Decoupling at the present time would be a regressive step.
