Has China become the world’s leading research nation?  

An increasing number of indicators suggest that China is on its way to becoming the world’s leading research nation. This trend is reinforced by the fact that, under President Trump, the United States is cutting research funding.  

In a broader context, the Chinese Communist Party’s vision is for the country to be a world leader in economics, politics, technology and military power by 2049, when the People’s Republic of China will celebrate its centenary. 

A key part of realising this ambition is heavy investment in research. This has led to astonishingly rapid progress, and Chinese research institutions and universities have climbed various rankings at a staggering pace, particularly when it comes to the number of research articles published. 

Every year, the Nature Index ranks leading research institutions based on the number of scientific articles published in leading journals. In 2025, nine out of the top ten institutions were Chinese, with third-placed Harvard the only one from another country. 

Dan Larhammar, Professor Emeritus of Molecular Cell Biology at Uppsala University and a former Chair of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, has just returned from China, and in his opinion, China is the world’s leading research nation. “There is no doubt that China is now number one, both in terms of quantity and quality,” he says. 

He refers to the report ‘Stint Outlook #4’, published by the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT). It was written by Erik Forsberg, who represents STINT in China and South-East Asia. He has worked in China for more than 17 years and is an associate senior lecturer at Zhejiang University. 

“I have been pointing out to people back home in Sweden for quite some time that China is very good at research,” Forsberg tells Universitetsläraren on a Teams call from Malaysia. “But their reaction has always been that rankings like this don’t reflect reality. In one way or another, people swept such statistics under the carpet, so to speak.”  

He says that standard university rankings take into account factors such as reputation, teaching and resources. “So if you want to understand which university is the best in the world at conducting good research, those are the wrong kinds of ranking to look at.”  

Instead, he has developed a range of different indicators that focus entirely on strength in research. He argues that if you look at all the numbers and methods together, they all point to the same thing. 

 “You see, even for someone like me who has worked in China for a very long time and who has long tried to tell people that China is very good at research, it’s hard to admit that China is the world’s leading research nation. So it’s easy to take a fall-back position and say that it is a world-leading research nation. But if we look at the figures, it’s clear.” 

However, he emphasises that this picture does not apply across the board. There are two areas where China is not better than North America and Europe. “One is the commercialisation of research, innovation and research-adjacent innovation. We’re good at getting the results of our research commercialised, either through start-ups or through partnerships with large companies.” 

The other is basic research. New ideas do not come from China. 

 “That’s perfectly understandable, as until very recently China has been playing catch-up with us. What will happen going forward is more interesting. China is now ramping up its funding for basic research significantly. The increase in resources has averaged 13 per cent in recent years, and this year they increased the funding for basic research by 16 per cent. So it’s rising fast.”

We return to Dan Larhammar, who elaborates on his point. 

“Of course, research productivity and success can be measured in various ways,” he explains. “If, for example, we measure the number of top researchers, the USA is still number one. But that’s based on their publication record over a longer period. It will obviously take time for China to catch up. The proportion of Chinese researchers among the most cited rose from 4 per cent in 2014 to 20 per cent in 2025. During that period, the number of American researchers among the most cited fell from 53 per cent to 37 per cent, though it still remains the highest. 

A more up-to-date picture, reflecting the current situation, is provided by data from the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) Leiden Rankings, published by Leiden University in the Netherlands. 

“That shows the change that has taken place over a ten-year period. It’s remarkable. I was very surprised myself when I saw the Leiden results,” says Larhammar. 

The CWTS looked at articles published in the top ten per cent of journals and compared the period 2009 to 2012 with the period 2019 to 2022. “Across all research disciplines, 16 of the top 20 universities in the first period were in the United States. None of the top 20 were from China.”

Ten years later, China was number one. It held twelve of the top 20 places, while the United States had fallen from having 16 universities on the list to five. Even when broken down by research subject, the shift is dramatic. According to Larhammar, there have been “unprecedented changes” in mathematics and computer science, physics and engineering. 

 One might, of course, question whether the measure used by the CWTS is relevant.  

 “We’ve tried to identify shortcomings, for example that China focuses on publishing in certain journals. But I find it hard to imagine that that could be the whole explanation. Not when I’ve seen it first-hand and spoken to colleagues,” he says.  

 He refers to his own trips to China, where he has visited around ten different research institutes. 

 “They’re generally very new. They have enormous resources, state-of-the-art equipment, spacious premises and incredibly talented researchers, many of whom have spent time in the USA or Europe, or sometimes in Japan or Australia. They’re now back in China and building up research.”  

 A week before our interview, Larhammar attended China’s neuroscience conference, which attracted 5,000 participants, the vast majority of whom were Chinese researchers.  

“They present world-leading research there. A year ago, I attended the International Meeting for Molecular Biology and Evolution, which was being held in Beijing for the first time. It was much the same there. Huge research projects were presented, which can be conducted thanks to the substantial resources available in China. So this is pioneering, world-leading research.” 

 For the sake of balance, he points out that by no means all Chinese research is of a high standard. There are great differences in quality. He says, for example, that not all Chinese research into what is known as traditional Chinese medicine is reliable. 

While Dan Larhammar is confident of China’s leading position, others in Sweden are more sceptical. As Per-Olof Brehmer, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Collaboration and Strategic Development at Linköping University, points out, we cannot automatically assume that volume is synonymous with quality and contributions to the forefront of research. 

“If you look solely at the number of scientific publications,” he explains, “you can say that China is now the country that publishes the most articles in several fields. But if, on the other hand, you look more closely at scientific contributions and the quality of those contributions, then it is by no means clear that we can equate volume with quality and contributions to the forefront of research.”

And Erik Renström, Vice-chancellor of Lund University, provides further nuance: “China is by no means the world’s leading research nation when it comes to the humanities, social sciences and political science, because those subjects are not researched with complete freedom in China. In that respect, we can say that we almost win by a walkover here.”

On the other hand, China has made progress across the board in physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering and life sciences.  

“We must also take into account that China is a large country. They enjoy economies of scale. But I think we should also remember that we are far better at educating a large proportion of the population and creating value for society as a whole,” he adds. 

But there is an elephant in the room. China is a one-party state, an increasingly authoritarian dictatorship that has been repeatedly accused of espionage and of stealing research findings. The Swedish Security Service has long urged universities to exercise caution when collaborating with China. 

“The fundamental issue with China,” says Gabriel Wernstedt, press secretary at the Security Service, “is that there is close collaboration between the military and civilian sectors, and that there are duty of notification laws that compel people to share information with the Chinese intelligence service if it so requests.”

He poses the rhetorical question of what this means for Sweden. “For such a small country, our technology and research are at the very forefront globally, in everything from engineering to green technology and various other types of research. So of course, this is something that the Chinese intelligence service is interested in.” 

However, the Security Service does not advise against cooperation with China either. 

“It’s not the case that all cooperation with China is harmful. However, it’s important to ask yourself a number of questions if you collaborate with a country like China, regarding possible vulnerabilities linked to such cooperation.” 

The think tank Stockholm Free World Forum (Frivärld), like the Security Service, warns of the risks involved when collaborating with Chinese universities and Chinese researchers. Stockholm Free World Forum is a foreign and security policy think tank, founded in 2011. It was quick to identify and highlight the need to understand security risks linked to the academic world. 

 “Above all,” says Anna Rennéus Guthrie, Director of Stockholm Free World Forum, “we have talked about how, in the past, universities showed a lack of awareness and knowledge. I don’t believe we can say that is still the case today. Over a number of years, there has been greater scrutiny, criticism and debate, and developments in this area have enabled universities to strengthen their capacity to manage security risks. At the same time, there is a fundamentally problematic inequality when a democratic academic environment meets academic environments from systems where freedom and democracy do not exist and/or mean entirely different things.” 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a watershed moment. 

“If you look at society as a whole, we have now largely come to terms with the kind of naivety that, when we look back collectively, we can say characterised Sweden up until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the question is whether we might not now also benefit from these insights to heighten our preparedness and vigilance when it comes to other actors as well.”  

Could an excessive focus on security mean that we miss out on research collaborations that would benefit Sweden? 

“It’s become increasingly clear that authoritarian powers seek to undermine the cohesion of democracies in many ways,” says Rennéus Guthrie. “I don’t believe that greater awareness of security makes us less productive in the field of research. To safeguard what is ours – our own democracy, our own productivity and welfare, and the development of our society – we need, rather, to be constantly mindful of the global situation in order to make sound and reasonable decisions and strike the necessary balances.” 

Attitudes within Swedish academia are considerably less alarmist. Linköping University has been singled out as one of the higher education institutions with the riskiest collaborations with China.  

“No, I wouldn’t say we stand out in that respect,” says Vice-Chancellor Per-Olof Brehmer. “As a broad university, we have quite a lot of international collaborations, including with Chinese higher education institutions and academics. We have clear procedures in place for international collaboration and have not ruled out Chinese higher education institutions as partners.”  

 In a widely discussed opinion piece published last year in the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, the Vice-chancellors of Chalmers University of Technology, the Royal Institute of Technology, Lund University and Uppsala University argued for greater cooperation with China. 

“Generally speaking, academia supports and promotes international cooperation,” Erik Renström, Vice-Chancellor of Lund University. “Boycotting someone on the basis of their nationality goes against that fundamental position. Many of our staff have been collaborating with Chinese colleagues for decades, and there is great value in maintaining these contacts. Despite geopolitical tensions, we do not need to dehumanise one another, but treat one another as valued colleagues.”  

However, he also believes that we should not turn a blind eye to the fact that problems exist. “It is, of course, clear today that our view of what constitutes a good society differs from the views of some other countries, and unfortunately that does not apply exclusively to China. You could say that this is now something the academic world must take into account in general.”

He believes we must begin by reviewing our own procedures: “What aspects of our own activities might be of interest to others? And how do we protect them? Because the security threats that have been detected so far often involve people gaining access to networks, accessing various types of data and identifying our vulnerabilities.” 

 And when working in China, an awareness of Chinese society is essential. “Obviously, employees visiting China and collaborating with colleagues there also need to consider the safety of our Chinese colleagues. They need to ensure they do not unwittingly put them in danger. But they also need to understand the context. They need to realise that it is not an entirely benevolent state.” 

Research collaboration itself, however, can be free of conflict. 

“I must say that at local levels, these collaborations can work extremely well. And the studies carried out so far suggest that researchers collaborating in STEM fields who are based in China find these collaborations to be mutually very rewarding.  

Other research areas face greater problems, Renström continues. “For example China experts who attempt to describe Chinese society and culture. This is not a new phenomenon. It has long been the case that if you organise an open seminar with speakers who are not considered to be acting in the interests of the Chinese regime, you will receive a phone call from a Chinese representative.”  

Lars Geschwind, Executive Director of SULF, says that academia is international in nature. “There are two opposing logics at play. Academic freedom – the free flow of knowledge and production of knowledge – stands in contrast to a more security-oriented mindset and a certain degree of caution when it comes to collaboration. Not just collaboration with China. But China is so big and dominant, and it’s growing so rapidly, that these are far greater issues when it comes to China than other countries. 

Dan Larhammar believes we must be realistic. “Sweden produces perhaps 1.5 per cent of the world’s scientific output. China produces an immense amount more. If we are to keep up and be able to benefit from advances in different fields of research, we need to collaborate. In that way, we can contribute what we are good at in Sweden.” 

“But of course we must collaborate sensibly,” he adds. “We have, after all, coined a term at STINT: ‘responsible internationalisation’. We should collaborate where possible, but we must be cautious where there is reason to be so.”  

The final word goes to Per-Olof Brehmer at Linköping University. 

“Most Swedish higher education institutions aim to contribute to scientific excellence, and to do so, we must also seek partnerships with suitable partners who can help develop our excellence and our research. It therefore makes sense for us to collaborate with Chinese higher education institutions as well, in order to strengthen our position and our role in the international scientific community. If we were to choose not to do so, I believe it would be detrimental in the long term, both to us as higher education institutions and to Sweden as a knowledge nation.”