For the first time, China has surpassed the United States in most cited publications, a crucial indicator of the influence of research. The achievement offers proof that China’s scholarship, which is well renowned for its expanding quantity, is also coming up in terms of quality.
China published 1,808 hot papers by the end of September 2022, a rise of 19.3% year over year and 41.7 % of the global total. The 2022 edition of the study “Statistical Data of Science and Technology Papers” placed the United States in second place with 1,730 hot articles.
Hot papers are studies over the last two years that have received a lot of recent citations and are in the top 0.1 % of their areas in terms of the number of citations received.
High-calibre research that has an immediate impact after publication belongs in this category. As a result, these articles frequently present the most significant and recent advances in science and technology as well as research directions for the future.
In terms of the overall number of citations produced by the nation’s foreign academic articles during the previous ten years, China also leads the globe in five scientific categories. Agriculture, materials science, chemistry, computer science, and engineering technology are the subject areas.
How did China achieved this feat?
China had made large investments in scientific infrastructure, research and development, and scholar and student mobility. China now spends the second most on research and technology, right after the US. Today, Chinese colleges generate the most engineering PhDs worldwide. The amount of money China spent on R&D as a percentage of its GDP went from less than 1% in 1980 to 2.4% in 2020. R&D investment in the nation reached a record level last year, up 14.2% from the year before to a total of 2.79 trillion yuan (US$440 billion).
An estimated 5.2 million Chinese students and scholars have travelled overseas to study since 2000. Most of them majored in engineering or science. Many of these students stayed in the area where they studied, but an increasing number go back to work in high-tech businesses and laboratories in China.
China’s scientific output, as shown by the total number of published articles, has grown consistently over the years thanks to all of these investments and a burgeoning, qualified workforce. For the first time ever, Chinese academics produced more scientific articles than American researchers in 2017.
What does it mean for China?
Increasing intellectual superiority for China against the USA or against any other nation for that matter directly meant a solid and prosperous future. For any country, R&D is the pillar for success in the industrial, agricultural, service and product sector. Science and technology directly reflect the military superiority of the nation. With China surpassing the superpower in terms of research papers published, the future is not that far when China becomes a superpower and rules the world in terms of economy and technology like the USA currently does and has been doing for the last 50 years.
Very informative article would like to appreciate the effort put into this. Promotion of R&D is very important in growth of any country for long run.