China appears to have overtaken the United States in science. China leads the way in 37 of the 44 fields surveyed. In synthetic biology and nanomaterials, the country is in danger of achieving a monopoly.
According to the think tank, China is leading the development of batteries, hypersonic devices and radio frequency communications, such as 5G and 6G. The United States still leads in only seven scientific areas, including vaccines, quantum computers and missile launch systems.
The Australian researchers looked at “high-impact” research on critical and emerging technologies, which had been published in top scientific journals and frequently cited by other scientists.
scientific superpower“Our research shows that China has built the foundation to position itself as a leading science and technology superpower in the world,” the report said. “The country enjoys a sometimes astonishing lead in key research in most emerging technologies.”
The Chinese Academy of Sciences ranks first or second in most of its 44 fields of technological research. The country relies heavily on Western talent for this. “A fifth of the major papers were written by researchers trained in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand,” the think tank wrote.
