China is redrawing the global science map, according to an analysis of citation data by the analytics firm Clarivate. The country is increasing research collaborations with European partners, even as it expands into emerging areas from southeast Asia to the Middle East and Africa. The United States, meanwhile, is losing its long-held lead as a research powerhouse and collaborator in world science.
Despite a brief dip during the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese collaborations with international partners across the globe, and in Europe in particular, have continued to rise. On the domestic front, China’s research output has more than doubled over the past decade: it surpassed the United States as the largest producer of research papers in 2020 and is now poised to take the lead in terms of citations.
By contrast, the United States has struggled to maintain both the quantity and the quality of its science. US research output has yet to recover from a
, but the analysis suggests that its troubles began earlier. The country’s citation impact for domestic research has been going down steadily for decades as other nations have upped their game, but Adams says the rate of decline has accelerated since around 2018.
