China is beating the world at scientific research, think tank finds

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has released an update to its Critical Technology Tracker, claiming that China leads the way in 89 percent of the technologies it tracks, at least in terms of research and development.

According to ASPI, the think tank's tracker "provides a leading indicator of a country's research performance, strategic intent and potential future science and technology capability."

It determines a country’s performance based on the amount of high-impact research it generates – as measured by the number of publications its institutions produced in the top ten percent of cited papers in their respective fields.

Launched in 2023, the project tracks 64 critical technologies across fields like defense, space, AI, quantum technology, cyber, advanced materials and robotics. Initially the think tank looked at data between 2018 and 2022, but the release on Wednesday widened its scope to cover over two decades.

By extending the duration over which results are studied, the project can reflect both short- and long-term trends among nations and their tech R&D prowess.

The tracker considers many nations and strategic blocs, but largely tells the story of the United States and China and how tech dominance has flipped from the former to the latter, in terms of research and development. According to the ASPI, the major shift occurred sometime around 2016.

For the first five years the project covers (2003 until 2007), the US held the top spot in the development of 60 of 64 technologies, and China led in only three (Japan led in the area of distributed ledgers, which was an emerging field at the time). Today, China leads in the research of 57 out of 64 technologies while the United States picks up the remaining seven.

"As our data shows, China has made huge strides over the past two decades, and especially since the 2010s," wrote the authors. They go on to suggest that Beijing's "Made in China 2025" plan – which was announced in 2015 and included massive direct state funding for R&D in key technologies – was a contributing factor.

They also warn that China has planned a major boost to its annual science and technology budget – increasing it to Ұ370.8 billion ($51.5 billion).

Areas in which the US leads are quantum computing, vaccines and medical countermeasures, nuclear medicine and radiotherapy, small satellites, atomic clocks, genetic engineering, and natural language processing.

Meanwhile, ASPI reports China's most recent gains occurred in the fields of quantum sensors, high-performance computing, gravitational sensors, space launch technology, and semiconductor chip fabrication.

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Leading is one thing – having a research monopoly is another. The project monitors technologies it thinks are "high risk" of becoming monopolized by a single nation and identified 24.

Last year, that number stood at 14. Every single one of the newly identified high-risk technologies were not only dominated by China, but also could be considered defense applications – including radar, advanced aircraft engines, drones, swarming and collaborative robots, and satellite positioning and navigation.

While the US and China dominate the tracker, India has made some notable inroads. It ranks among the top five countries in 45 out of 64 critical technologies – an increase from 37 in the previous year – demonstrating its growing influence and capability. The nation has displaced the US as the second-ranked nation in biological manufacturing and distributed ledgers.

Most other countries remained around the same level in their research prowess, with one exception: the UK. The UK saw a drop in top five country rankings in eight different technologies – it now ranks in the top five for only 36 categories.

South Korea made the top five in five of the 24 technologies ASPI investigated, reflecting its substantial investments in technology.

"The results in this report should serve as a reminder to governments around the world that gaining and maintaining scientific and research excellence isn't a tap that can be turned on and off," warned ASPI.

The think tank cautioned: "Building technological capability requires a sustained investment in, and an accumulation of, scientific knowledge, talent and high-performing institutions that can't be acquired through only short-term or ad hoc investments." ®