China has overtaken the US for the first time in the Nature Index of quality scientific publications
The confrontation between the US and China is not only on technological and economic, but also on the scientific front. As reported by Nature, according to the results of 2022 China surpassed the USA for the first time in the index of scientific publications Nature Index.
We are used to the fact that the USA is the leading power in world science. The USA confidently holds the first place in terms of the number of Nobel Prize laureates – 403 laureates, against 137 in Great Britain and 114 in Germany. China is only 23rd in this list with 9 laureates, and Ukraine is 25th with 7 laureates (5 of them by birth, not citizenship). And although the United States lost the first place in terms of the number of institutions of higher education to India (5,288 against 3,216 as of 2021), the scientific base of the United States has a very solid foundation.
At the same time, as of 2018, China was ahead of the United States in terms of the total number of scientific publications, but now it has overtaken it in terms of the number of really important publications that are published in 82 respected scientific journals included in the so-called Nature Index.
Chinese scientists authored 19,373 publications in Nature Index publications from January to December 2022, while American scientists published only 17,610 scientific papers in the same journals in 2022.
The number of publications by Chinese scientists in respected Western scientific journalss began to grow rapidly from 2015, when they were only 7.5 thousand per year.
Yes, Chinese science still has many limitations, including cooperation with Western scientific institutions, but the growth in the number of publications is really impressive, because scientific publications today are new technologies, methods and specific products in three to five years.