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• NATURE INDEX
• 29 November 2023

Why is China’s high-quality research footprint becoming more introverted?

• Brian Owens 0

Brian Owens is a freelance writer in New Brunswick, Canada.

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Travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic are among the factors that have altered China’s patterns of international research collaboration. Credit: Greg Baker/AFP via Getty

When China overtook the United States in the Nature Index for contributions to natural-sciences research articles last year, it marked a watershed moment for the database and for Chinese science. Since the index was launched in 2014, China’s ‘Share’ — a Nature Index metric that takes into account the percentage of authors from a particular location on each paper — has been rising. In 2022, for the first time, China led the world, with a Share of 19,373, an increase of more than 21% from the previous year, well ahead of the US Share of 17,610.

Digging into the data, however, confirms another stark trend in global science. When China’s Share is divided by its ‘Count’ — a Nature Index metric that counts every article that has at least one author from a certain country — it becomes clear that, although the country is contributing more to high-quality research than ever before, much less of that research is being conducted with collaborators from other countries. In 2022, China’s Share/Count ratio reached 82% (a ratio of 100% would indicate no international collaboration at all). This number has been rising steadily for several years: in 2015, China’s ratio was 72%, for instance. At the same time, the ratio for most other major science nations has been falling. For example, the US ratio was 75% in 2015 and 70% in 2022, and for Germany, the ratio fell from 56% to 50% over the same period . In some scientific journals and fields, the trend is even more pronounced (see ‘Minimal collaboration’ and ‘Opposite directions’). China’s Share/Count ratio in the journal Analytical Chemistry , for example, was 96% in 2022.

Pandemic hangover

China’s decline in international collaboration in journals tracked by the Nature Index has been under way for several years, although it was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The trend began prior to the pandemic, but you can’t dismiss COVID-19 as having an impact on anything and everything,” says Denis Simon, former executive vice-chancellor of Duke Kunshan University in Suzhou, China.

Global science is splintering into two — and this is becoming a problem

China had some of the strictest and longest-lasting travel restrictions in the world, making it more difficult for scientists to meet potential collaborators. That led to policy changes in China that made international collaboration less important to researchers’ careers. For example, many Chinese institutions had required international collaborations for a researcher to be considered for promotion, but this was dropped during the pandemic, says Fei Shu, a consultant on research assessment at the University of Calgary in Canada. “I’m not sure if it will be brought back, but for now it’s not a requirement, so there is less motivation,” he says.

The Chinese Scholarship Council, a non-profit organization run by the Chinese Ministry of Education, which pays for many Chinese academics to spend time as visiting scholars abroad, also paused funding during the pandemic, says Shu. It will take time for the number of Chinese scholars visiting the West to recover.

Although ways of facilitating virtual collaboration took off during the pandemic, Caroline Wagner, who studies international scientific collaboration at the Ohio State University in Columbus, says that face-to-face meetings are still crucial for bringing researchers together in the first place. “My research shows that 90% of international collaborations begin face-to-face, when people meet at conferences, research centres, or during visiting professorships,” she says. “Hardly any partnerships begin completely virtually.”

The importance of these kinds of personal relationship is especially apparent in US–China collaborations, says Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One analysis shows that 78.5% of collaborative US–China papers have at least one Chinese author who either works as a scientist at a US institution or has returned home after studying in the United States 1 . It is clear that the disruption of the pandemic will have a notable effect on collaborations for some time, says Wagner.

Larger trends

Both Wagner and Freeman also noticed a pre-pandemic drop — particularly in US–China collaboration — in their own research, which uses much larger databases than the Nature Index.

Freeman says that some of this is simply owing to relative shifts in domestic and international publishing. His work found that, despite the drop in US–China collaboration, there was a rise in the total number of international collaborative papers published between 2018 and 2022. But there was a much larger increase in the number of papers with only China-based authors — often people who had been educated solely in China and who had little or no international experience. “China has ramped up domestic science so much, and international collaborations are not keeping pace,” says Freeman.

That increase, and the high quality of the country’s domestic publications, means that international collaboration might be becoming less necessary. “As China makes more progress, the need for collaboration could diminish in some fields,” says Simon. “They have enough options within the country to produce good partners.”

Domestic collaborations tend to go more smoothly than international ones during times of pandemic disruption and political tensions, he adds.

Certain policies in Chinese academia might also be driving the trend. In many cases, says Shu, only the first author of a paper gets credit for a publication in China’s evaluation and promotion systems. So China-based researchers might be less motivated to collaborate internationally if they will end up in the middle of the author list. “They will focus on their own projects, and may be less likely to join others’ projects,” he says.

The Chinese government has also been trying to encourage scientists to publish more of their work in Chinese journals, rather than international publications, says Simon. More collaborative research might gradually be appearing in local journals.

‘A new cold war’

Political tensions between China and many Western nations are also taking a toll on collaboration. Many Western governments have become more suspicious of Chinese scientists in the past five to six years, with fears that they might be part of attempts to steal technology and cutting-edge research.

The US China Initiative, launched under former US president Donald Trump in 2018, led to fraud cases being brought against researchers who failed to disclose ties to China on grant applications, although many of those charges were later dropped. Earlier this year, Canada banned government funding for research collaborations involving scientists with connections to the defence or state-security entities of foreign countries that it deems a risk to Canada’s national security. Germany is developing a similar policy.

The heightened suspicion has led to lengthy and complex visa processes, which are starting to discourage some Chinese scientists from visiting Western countries. “I have colleagues who spent six months waiting to get a visa for a conference,” says Shu. “This side effect of these political issues is having a heavy influence on scientific collaboration. The last four to five years have been like a new cold war.”

The tense political climate is having a chilling effect on collaboration, says Simon. “Chinese scientists don’t know if they are going to get fingered for doing something nefarious, even when they are not,” he says. “They may decide it’s not worth the risk.”

Earlier this year, Simon resigned from his job at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in protest against what he saw as the university’s restrictive policies on Chinese collaborations. He told Times Higher Education ( THE ) that he had faced undue bureaucracy when organizing research trips to China, had been stopped from taking students to visit the country, and that the university had tried to shut down an informal policy discussion that he had arranged between colleagues and Chinese embassy staff. The university would not comment on personnel matters, but told THE that it had had a “steadfast commitment to maintaining the integrity of research” and “take[s] very seriously legitimate concerns about the need to safeguard US academic research from improper foreign influence”.

There are still many countries that would welcome collaboration with China, however. The balance might be shifting away from the scientific powerhouses of the West to other countries, such as those taking part in China’s Belt and Road Initiative — a global infrastructure-development strategy aimed at improving trade — most of whose members are countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America. The results of these collaborations might be published in a broader variety of journals, but this might not be of concern to China if its ultimate goal is wider scientific influence. “China is expanding its collaborative footprint around the world. For example, they have signed science and technology cooperative agreements with 116 countries,” says Wagner. China has also made agreements with middle- and low-income nations in South America and Africa. “So, perhaps there is less focus on the elite journals.”

It is important not to extrapolate an irreversible trend from these data. Relations between China and the West might slowly begin to improve in the future: the China Initiative was discontinued in February, and the United States and China renewed their science and technology cooperation agreement in August, although only for six months. Wagner and Simon both say that their colleagues in China remain keen to work with international peers. A forum on open innovation in China in May, that Simon attended, featured a letter from Chinese President Xi Jinping, stressing the importance of international collaboration.

“My sense is that China is still very highly engaged in international science,” says Simon. “Even if the US relationship is in decline, China wants to maintain its relationship with other countries.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03762-4

Xie, Q. & Freeman, R. B. NBER https://doi.org/10.3386/w31306 (2023).

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China now publishes more high-quality science than any other nation – should the US be worried?

Milton & Roslyn Wolf Chair in International Affairs, The Ohio State University

Disclosure statement

Caroline Wagner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The Ohio State University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US.

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By at least one measure, China now leads the world in producing high-quality science . My research shows that Chinese scholars now publish a larger fraction of the top 1% most cited scientific papers globally than scientists from any other country.

I am a policy expert and analyst who studies how governmental investment in science, technology and innovation improves social welfare. While a country’s scientific prowess is somewhat difficult to quantify, I’d argue that the amount of money spent on scientific research, the number of scholarly papers published and the quality of those papers are good stand-in measures.

China is not the only nation to drastically improve its science capacity in recent years, but China’s rise has been particularly dramatic. This has left U.S. policy experts and government officials worried about how China’s scientific supremacy will shift the global balance of power . China’s recent ascendancy results from years of governmental policy aiming to be tops in science and technology. The country has taken explicit steps to get where it is today, and the U.S. now has a choice to make about how to respond to a scientifically competitive China.

Growth across decades

In 1977, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping introduced the Four Modernizations , one of which was strengthening China’s science sector and technological progress. As recently as 2000, the U.S. produced many times the number of scientific papers as China annually. However, over the past three decades or so, China has invested funds to grow domestic research capabilities, to send students and researchers abroad to study, and to encourage Chinese businesses to shift to manufacturing high-tech products.

Since 2000, China has sent an estimated 5.2 million students and scholars to study abroad . The majority of them studied science or engineering. Many of these students remained where they studied, but an increasing number return to China to work in well-resourced laboratories and high-tech companies.

Today, China is second only to the U.S. in how much it spends on science and technology . Chinese universities now produce the largest number of engineering Ph.D.s in the world, and the quality of Chinese universities has dramatically improved in recent years .

Producing more and better science

Thanks to all this investment and a growing, capable workforce, China’s scientific output – as measured by the number of total published papers – has increased steadily over the years. In 2017, Chinese scholars published more scientific papers than U.S. researchers for the first time.

Quantity does not necessarily mean quality though. For many years, researchers in the West wrote off Chinese research as low quality and often as simply imitating research from the U.S. and Europe . During the 2000s and 2010s, much of the work coming from China did not receive significant attention from the global scientific community.

But as China has continued to invest in science, I began to wonder whether the explosion in the quantity of research was accompanied by improving quality.

To quantify China’s scientific strength, my colleagues and I looked at citations. A citation is when an academic paper is referenced – or cited – by another paper. We considered that the more times a paper has been cited, the higher quality and more influential the work. Given that logic, the top 1% most cited papers should represent the upper echelon of high-quality science.

My colleagues and I counted how many papers published by a country were in the top 1% of science as measured by the number of citations in various disciplines. Going year by year from 2015 to 2019, we then compared different countries. We were surprised to find that in 2019, Chinese authors published a greater percentage of the most influential papers , with China claiming 8,422 articles in the top category, while the U.S had 7,959 and the European Union had 6,074. In just one recent example, we found that in 2022, Chinese researchers published three times as many papers on artificial intelligence as U.S. researchers; in the top 1% most cited AI research, Chinese papers outnumbered U.S. papers by a 2-to-1 ratio. Similar patterns can be seen with China leading in the top 1% most cited papers in nanoscience, chemistry and transportation.

Our research also found that Chinese research was surprisingly novel and creative – and not simply copying western researchers. To measure this, we looked at the mix of disciplines referenced in scientific papers. The more diverse and varied the referenced research was in a single paper, the more interdisciplinary and novel we considered the work. We found Chinese research to be as innovative as other top performing countries.

Taken together, these measures suggest that China is now no longer an imitator nor producer of only low-quality science. China is now a scientific power on par with the U.S. and Europe, both in quantity and in quality.

Fear or collaboration?

Scientific capability is intricately tied to both military and economic power. Because of this relationship, many in the U.S. – from politicians to policy experts – have expressed concern that China’s scientific rise is a threat to the U.S., and the government has taken steps to slow China’s growth. The recent Chips and Science Act of 2022 explicitly limits cooperation with China in some areas of research and manufacturing. In October 2022, the Biden administration put restrictions in place to limit China’s access to key technologies with military applications .

A number of scholars, including me, see these fears and policy responses as rooted in a nationalistic view that doesn’t wholly map onto the global endeavor of science.

Academic research in the modern world is in large part driven by the exchange of ideas and information. The results are published in publicly available journals that anyone can read. Science is also becoming ever more international and collaborative , with researchers around the world depending on each other to push their fields forward. Recent collaborative research on cancer , COVID-19 and agriculture are just a few of many examples. My own work has also shown that when researchers from China and the U.S. collaborate, they produce higher quality science than either one alone.

China has joined the ranks of top scientific and technological nations, and some of the concerns over shifts of power are reasonable in my view. But the U.S. can also benefit from China’s scientific rise. With many global issues facing the planet – like climate change , to name just one – there may be wisdom in looking at this new situation as not only a threat, but also an opportunity.

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China’s Research Evaluation Reform: What are the Consequences for Global Science?

• Published: 30 April 2022
• Volume 60 , pages 329–347, ( 2022 )

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• Fei Shu 1 , 2 ,
• Sichen Liu 1 &
• Vincent Larivière   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2733-0689 2 , 3  

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In the 1990s, China created a research evaluation system based on publications indexed in the Science Citation Index (SCI) and on the Journal Impact Factor. Such system helped the country become the largest contributor to the scientific literature and increased the position of Chinese universities in international rankings. Although the system had been criticized by many because of its adverse effects, the policy reform for research evaluation crawled until the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic, which accidently accelerates the process of policy reform. This paper highlights the background and principles of this reform, provides evidence of its effects, and discusses the implications for global science.

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Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

In parallel with the exponential growth of its economy, China’s emergence in science and technology has had a far-reaching impact on global science. In 2017, China has surpassed the US and became the largest source country in terms of the number of scholarly papers (National Science Board 2018 ), and its R&D expenditures are almost on par with those of the US (543 vs. 582 billion USD in 2018) (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2018 ). Such growth in international research output can be associated with the implementation of China’s national strategy of science and education, in which science, technology and education are given priority in the national development plan (National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China 2007 ). The key elements of the national strategy include the increasing investment in R&D and promotion of internationalisation of research (Marginson 2021 ). It is also partly attributed to the creation of a SCI-based research evaluation system, favoring publications indexed by the Science Citation Index (SCI). Since the 1990s, the number of such international publications as well as other related bibliometric indicators (e.g. Journal Impact Factors (JIF), Essential Science Indicators (ESI), etc.) have been overweighed in research evaluation, tenure assessment, funding application as well as performance salaries in China (Quan et al. 2017 ; Shu et al. 2020a ) to develop China’s leadership in global science.

In China, SCI-based indicators are applied to research evaluations at both individual and institutional levels. However, they have been criticized for their negative effects on academic integrity (Quan et al. 2017 ; Tang 2019 ) and national knowledge dissemination (Chu et al. 2015 ; Duan et al. 2015 ; W. Li et al. 2015 ; C.-e. Liu 2018 ; Yanyang Liu et al. 2003 ; X. Wang 2012 ; Jiping Zhang 2019 ; Zhu 2020 ; Zou and Zhang 2017 ) for several years. A policy reform against indicator-based research evaluation has also been called for a long time (L. Zhang and Sivertsen 2020 ). As early as 2011, Ministry of Education (MoE) issued a document regarding the change of research evaluation in social sciences and humanities (Ministry of Education of China 2011 ). The policy reform even gained the attention from China’s leaders; in 2016, China’s Chairman Xi ( 2016 ) asked Chinese scientists to “publish papers on homeland”. As a response in 2018, MoE, Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MoST), Ministry of Human Resource and Social Security (MoHRSS), Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) issued a joint document asking universities and research institutes not to abusively use indicators relative to papers, titles, ranks, degrees and awards (Ministry of Education of China 2018 ). However, significant changes were not observed in China’s research evaluation system, and SCI-based indicators have still been abundantly used.

Perhaps unexpectedly, a real change to the SCI-based evaluation system was triggered by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Chinese researchers prioritized publication of findings on the new coronavirus in international journals (Huang et al. 2020 ; Q. Li et al. 2020 ) rather than national journals, which would have helped disseminating them to those who were fighting the pandemic (Ministry of Science and Technology of China 2020a ). The publication of these two articles aroused public anger and was accused of delaying the control of the pandemic (An 2020 ; Du 2020 ; Qin 2020 ). In response to this (H. Li 2020 ; Yan Liu 2020 ), MoST and MoE issued two official documents in February 2020 that aim to reshape scholarly communication and research evaluation in China (Ministry of Education of China and Ministry of Science and Technology of China 2020a , b ; Ministry of Science and Technology of China 2020b ), which attempt to overcome the abusive use of SCI-based indicators on research evaluation (Quan et al. 2017 ; Shu et al. 2020a ) and build a new scientific research evaluation system.

As the largest contributor, China publishes almost one fourth of scientific literature and one fifth of international collaboration (ISTIC 2020 ). The possible impact of China’s research evaluation reform on global science has been of concern (Mallapaty 2020 ). In this study, we highlight the principles of policy reform as well as their background, and analyze the possible implications for global science.

Policy Reform

The two documents issued by MoE and MoST contain seven major measures, which can be divided into three aspects of scholarly communication and research evaluation as shown in Table 1 .

Farewell to the SCI

SCI-based indicators were introduced in the 1990s when the country initiated its ambious plan Footnote 1 to embrace the global science. Nanjing University was the first university to use SCI papers for research evaluation, and topped China’s university rankings afterwards. SCI-based indicators then spread across the country, as research administrators regarded them as a solution to increase China’s share of international publications (Qiu and Ji 2003 ). Many Chinese scholars also believed that SCI-based indicators were fairer than peer review, which was considered to be biased by personal relationship and seniority in China (Shi and Rao 2010 ).

In order to promote university research, three national programs (i.e., Project 211, Project 985, and Double First Class) have been initiated one by one since the 1990s. These programs provide substantial financial support to a small group of selected universities, and one key admission requirement is the number of international publications (Shu et al. 2020b ). To encourage scholars to publish internationally and improve their rankings, Chinese universities apply the SCI-based indicators that have, since then, been considered as the gold standard in China’s research evaluation. SCI papers became mandatory requirements for doctoral degrees, faculty hiring and promotion, funding applications, and university rankings. Publishing in a subset of SCI-indexed elite journals leads to major research funding, as well as additional rewards, such as promotion from assistant to full professor, appointment as Chair or Dean, and even to university president (Shu et al. 2020a ). Cash-per-publication policies have also been widespread, leading to additional revenues of up to 1 million CNY per paper (150,000USD) (Quan et al. 2017 ).

The strong pressures to publish in SCI journals may lead to the effect of goal displacement (Frey et al. 2013 ; Osterloh and Frey 2014 ) which the Chinese government became acutely aware of at the outbreak of the pandemic. The purpose of research for some Chinese institutions and scholars is not to advance knowledge, but rather to improve their rankings and indicators, even at the cost of research integrity (Tang 2019 ). Indeed, over the last two decaces, along with the growing number of international publications from China, cases of academic misconduct (plagiarism, academic dishonesty, ghostwritten papers, fake peer review, etc.) have also increased (Jia 2017 ; Hvistendahl 2013 ). The scale of adacemic misconduct cases evolved from individual cases to “paper mills” (Chawla 2020 ; Else and Van Noorden 2021 ). In this context, it is not surprising that the number of China’s retracted papers has been increasing in the past two decades, and China has the largest number of retracted papers, contributing to 24% of all retracted papers (490/2,061) in 2020, followed by the US (122) and Iran (79) as reported by Web of Science (Figure 1 ). Figure 1 also shows that the share of China’s retractions to all retractions across the world has been higher than the share of China’s publications to all publications worldwide since 2004.

Number and share of China’s publications and retractions indexed by the Web of Science (2000–2020)

Priority to National Journals

SCI-based evaluation policies have created incentives for Chinese scholars to publish their research in international journals rather than in national journals (Zou and Zhang 2017 ; C.-e. Liu 2018 ). In China, however, international journals are less accessible than national Chinese journals due to the paywalls and language (Schiermeier 2018 ). As a result, dissemination of findings to the international scientific community comes at the expense of the national Chinese community (Larivière et al. 2020 ), and this was clearly observed at the outbreak of the pandemic, when Chinese scholars disseminated their findings on human-to-human transmission of coronavirus internationally rather than nationally. Local health practitioners were not informed by their colleagues, but aware of such a crucial finding from the paper (Q. Li et al. 2020 ) published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Du 2020 ; Qin 2020 ; Wuhan Municipal Health Commission 2020 ).

Since the end of World War II, dissemination of science has been dominated by English, leading to a corresponding decrease for other languages (Larivière and Warren 2019 ). This was also observed for papers published in Chinese, as the number of national publications indexed by China Scientific and Technical Papers and Citation Database (CSTPCD) Footnote 2 started to decrease in 2010 (Figure 2 ). In some disciplines such as Condensed Matter Physics, Applied Mathematics, or Crystallography and Electrochemistry, Chinese scholars even give up publishing papers in local Chinese journals (Shu et al. 2019 ). Some Chinese scholars argue that publishing internationally prevents knowledge dissemination through national journals (Zou and Zhang 2017 ; C.-e. Liu 2018 ). Indeed, in 2019, Chinese researchers have published more papers internationally than they have nationally for the first time.

Number of national and international publications in China (1995-2019) (National Bureau of Statistics of China 1996 –2019)

This can also be observed at the ownership shares of international journals: while Chinese researchers contribute to about 25% of international literature, less than 2% of these international journals are owned by Chinese publishers (ISTIC 2020 ). Such imbalance has been noted by China’s leaders, with Chairman Xi requesting that scientists publish nationally (Xi 2016 ). As a response (Ministry of Science and Technology of China 2020a ), the reform gives emphasis to national scholarly communication by requiring researchers to publish at least one third of their papers in national journals.

Restrictions to Open Access Publishing

Despite limited access to subscription journals (Schiermeier 2018 ), open access (OA) publishing remains controversial in China. Papers published in OA journals are often valued less as those published in subscription journals, and are even excluded from research evaluations. This can be attributed to the perception that OA journals are predatory and perform very little peer review (Li 2006 ; Xu et al. 2018 ; Liu and Huang 2007 ).

Despite this perception, the percentage of Chinese papers published in Gold OA journals has been increasing from 4.9% in 2008 to 30.0% in 2020 in the dimensions.ai database. This percentage is higher than that of the United States (20.5%) and the United Kingdom (21.5%), on a par with that of Japan (30.4%), but remains lower than that of Brazil (55.3%), which publishes mainly in the non-APC journals indexed by its national platform, SciELO. China is, however, among the countries with the lower share of hybrid OA (around 2%), which suggests that paying APCs in subscription journals is not rewarded. The main reason for Chinese scholars to choose OA journals is not research impact or global reach, but whether the journal is indexed by WoS (Xu et al. 2020 ). Commercial publishers have taken advantage of such focus on WoS, and created low quality journals with nominal or no peer review and quick acceptance (Xia et al. 2017 ). For example, IvySpring International Publisher, an Australian OA publisher, has four journals indexed by WoS; almost two thirds of papers published in 2018 were contributed by Chinese authors.

As most OA journals are published outside China, it is believed that a large amount of research funding is lost through APCs (Liu 2018 ). A list of APCs (in 2018) of all OA journals indexed by Web of Science was collected and built in this study. The number of APC paid, and APC revenue generated were calculated on the basis of first affiliated institution in the byline and regular APC rate. Although the APCs are normally billed to the corresponding authors, Chinese scholars only can receive the reimbursement of APC payments when their affiliated institutions are ranked first in the byline. In 2018, the 89,165 OA papers (Gold and Hybrid OA indexed by WoS) published by Chinese institutions as the first affiliated institution incurred around 165 million USD APCs as calculated. Springer Nature generated more than 33 million USD revenue from APCs in China, followed by MDPI (29 million USD), Frontiers (15 million USD) and Hindawi (15 million USD), which focus on the OA publishing (Figure 3 ).

Publishers’ share of China’s OA publishing (2018)

Since the 1990s, the number of international papers indexed by SCI has been applied to research evaluation in China to increase the international visibility of China’s research (Gong and Qu 2010 ; Quan et al. 2017 ). In addition to the research evaluation policies, monetary incentives and performance bonus are also used to encourage Chinese scholars to publish SCI papers (Peng 2011 ; Quan et al. 2017 ; Shu et al. 2020a ), eventually forming a SCI-based research evaluation system in which SCI-based indicators become the most important criterion in tenure assessment, funding application, university ranking and other research assessment activities (Quan et al. 2017 ; Zhao and Ma 2019 ; Shu et al. 2020a ). As a result, Chinese scholars, especially in Natural Sciences, are required to publish SCI papers for their tenure and promotion as university and research institutes rely on such SCI-based indicators for their ranking and funding records (Shu et al. 2020a ; Wang and Li 2015 ).

Although the SCI-based research evaluation system partly contributes to China’s rise in global science, the abusive use of SCI-based indicators in research evaluation has been criticized for a long time since international publications only do not adequately represent China’s research activities (Guan and He 2005 ; Shu et al. 2019 ; Jin and Rousseau 2004 ; Jin et al. 2002 ; Liang and Wu 2001 ; Moed 2002 ; Zhou and Leydesdorff 2007 ). Some scholars even point out that the increase of international publications may come at the expense of dissemination of research to local Chinese communities (Zou and Zhang 2017 ; Xu 2020 ; Liu 2018 ), considering many international publications are less accessible in China because of the paywalls and language barriers. Indeed, the number of local national publications in China has been declining in the past decade as Chinese scholars have published more international publications than local national publications since 2019 (ISTIC 2021 ).

In addition, the SCI-based research evaluation brings a negative goal displacement effect (Frey et al. 2013 ; Osterloh and Frey 2014 ) as the purpose of publishing for some Chinese scholars is not to advance and disseminate knowledge but to complete the research evaluation and receive monetary awards (Quan et al. 2017 ), forming a different reward system of science (Merton 1973 , 1957 ). Furthermore, with the growth of the number of international publications, the number of academic misconducts such as plagiarism, paper mills, fake peer review and so on have also been increasing in China, which seriously affects China’s academic reputation (Hu et al. 2019 ; Tang 2019 ).

Although a science policy reform regarding the SCI-based research evaluation has been called for several years, the SCI-based indicators are still favored by research administration. China’s research evaluation policy is trapped in a dilemma of antinomy (Zhou and Zhang 2017 )—some official documents against the use of SCI-based indicators were issued while some research programs using SCI-based indicators were still promoted (Zhao and Ma 2019 ).

Implications

The new policy by MoST and MoE aims to create a rebalance contributing to global science and supporting national interests. This will not only affect Chinese scholars but the international research community, as China is the largest source contributor to scientific literature. However, no immediate changes to Chinese researchers’ dissemination practices have been noticed over the last eighteen months as Chinese scholars published 590,649 papers indexed by WoS in 2020, reaching its historical high.

What are the Alternative Research Evaluation Criteria?

Although both MoST and MoE intend to say farewell to SCI-based evaluation, they did not reveal how to achieve this beyond general principles. The two ministries delegated this responsibility to provincial departments, which have to design new evaluation systems based on those principles. Considering the top-down administration model in China that officials get used to implementing the policies and executing the orders from the top, it is hard to imagine that the provincial departments could formulate any detailed policies regarding the new evaluation system in a short term. In the following 12 months, all 31 provincial divisions (including 22 provinces, 4 municipalities and 5 autonomous regions) answered the call from MoST and MoE, but in different ways. According to the documents collected in this study, 16 Provincial Departments of Science and Technology issued their corresponding documents while the rest only forwarded the two official documents of MoST and MoE. Furthermore, these 16 new provincial documents do not reveal any alternatives to the SCI, and simply quote the statements made by MoST and MoE.

Indeed, Chinese scholars pointed out the impossibility of finding an alternative in a short term (L. Yu 2020 ), considering the SCI-based research evaluation system has deep roots in China. MoST and MoE emphasize that the future of research evaluation lies in peer review. However, peer review in China is also very controversial, given the strong influence of guanxi (personal relationships) (Shi and Rao 2010 ). Along those lines, given its time and resource consuming aspect, it is difficult to complete a large amount of research evaluations through peer review only (Bornmann 2011 ).

The Voice of the Silent Majority

MoST is responsible for coordinating science and technology activities, whereas MoE administrates universities, which are responsible for most research conducted in the country (83.5% of monographs and 75.5% of journal articles) (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2019 ). National research institutes and funding agencies are affiliated to MoST while MoE operates national research programs such as Project 211, Project 985, and Double First-Class, which provide substantial financial support to a small group of selected universities. Thus, in such dual administration, the policy reform needs to be coordinated by both MoST and MoE.

However, that does not seem to be the case. For instance, the MoE does not seem to push the policy as much as the MoST. On the contrary, MoE keeps promoting the Double First-Class program, which uses WoS/ESI indicators as a key criterion for admission (Chen and Qiu 2019 ; G. Zhao and Ma 2019 ). Recently, MoE issued two documents regarding research evaluation in social sciences and humanities (Ministry of Education of China 2020 ) and university tenure assessment (Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and Ministry of Education of China 2021 ). Those did not contain anything new, and simply restated the measures announced in February 2020. Indeed, some universities have already figured out how to deal with the prohibition—they replaced direct cash-per-publication by a score assigned to each individual SCI paper… a score that could be converted into salary at the end of the year (Quan et al. 2017 ). Since the documents issued by MoST and MoE only prohibit direct cash awards for individual publications, universities or research institutes can use indirect monetary awards instead. Thus, we are far from a revolutionary change in the research evaluation practices of Chinese universities.

Global Leadership

In the 1990s, China launched an ambitious plan (Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and State Council of China 1995 ) for global leadership in science. One may consider the plan to be successful, as the country is now the largest contributor to research papers worldwide. China intends to expand its leadership to academic publishing. The purpose of the new China Science and Technology Journal Excellence Action Plan (CSTJEAP) is not only to encourage Chinese scientists to publish papers in national journals, but also to make their national journals more global.

CSTJEAP will not prevent Chinese researchers from publishing in top international journals. However, it aims to restrict publication in those with less impact, especially Gold and Hybrid OA journals with APCs. For example, we may no longer see many Chinese papers in the Czech Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding (an OA journal indexed by WoS), in which more than half of papers published in 2018 came from Chinese authors. Indeed, those 89,165 China’s OA papers (either Gold or Hybrid OA) were published in 2,638 journals indexed by WoS in 2018; as Table 2 shows, only 335 and 913 journals were respectively included in Quartile 1 of Chinese Academy of Science Journal Partition (CASJP) and Journal Citation Report (JCR) that are used to define the high-quality journals in China. It means that the vast majority of OA papers (between 58,769 and 83,961) are ineligible to be high quality publications (HQPs) for the reimbursement of APCs under the new policy. This may also lead to a decrease of 14.1–20.3% in OA publications worldwide.

Uncertain Future

More than 30 years ago, China opened its doors to the West and embraced the international society; since then, China’s economy has experienced a tremendous growth and has become the fastest growing economy in the world. As a rising power, China created tensions challenging the existing international order (Kim and Gates 2015 ; Punnoose and Vinodan 2019 ), controlled and dominated by Western countries. Under the leadership of Chairman Xi, China has adopted an increasingly ambitious strategy pursuing global leadership not only in politics and economics but also in science, which will influence China’s science policies in the future.

In Chinese perspectives, although China is the largest contributor to global science, its power of discourse (Foucault 1971 ) in academia is still limited as the international scholarly communication system is controlled by Western countries in terms of academic journals, professional association, and academic norms (Zhang 2012 ; Liang 2014 ; Wang 2011 ). It is believed that the Western-centrism (Hobson 2012 ) exists in global science (especially in social sciences) as research topics, paradigms, methodologies, and evaluation are dominated by Western countries through their control over international scholarly communication venues as well as their peer-review process (Yu and Qiu 2021 ; Zhang 2016 ; Wang 2011 ). Some scholars even argue that Western countries use scholarly communication to disseminate Western culture, value and ideology for the purpose of politics (Jiang 2018 ; Xie 2014 ; Zhao 2020 ).

With the increase of the global share of scientific literature, Chinese scholars attempt to convert their roles in global science, from participants to leaders; sharing and gaining the power of academic discourse is considered as the prerequisite (Zhang 2016 ; Xu 2020 ; Zhang 2012 ; Shen 2016 ; Hu 2013 ). One example is that IEEE had to drop its ban on using Huawei scientists as reviewers under the pressure amid boycott from China’s academia (Mervis 2019 ; IEEE 2019 ). Indeed, Academic Discourse Power has become a popular research and news topic in China in the past decade (Figure 4 ). Some proposals suggest building a new global scholarly communication system including China-owned English journals, self-reliant citation index, and a database indexing English abstracts of Chinese papers (Wu and Tong 2017 ; Zhou 2012 ; Zhang and Zhen 2017 ; Fang 2020 ; Lu 2018 ), which was adopted in the two official documents by MoST and MoE.

Number of Chinese Publications Regarding Academic Discourse Power from CNKI (2011–2020)

Recently, China released its 14th five-year social and economic development plan, which identifies scholarly communication as an approach disseminating China’s culture, beliefs and values, and emphasises more self-reliance rather than international collaboration in science and technology development (Government of People's Republic of China 2021 ). The plan mentions the proposal building a national scholarly communication system in response to Chairman Xi’s call to “publish papers on homeland” (Xi 2016 ). Although these long term goals will not come into effect immediately, even be replaced by other strategies in the next five-year plan, they create uncertainty for the future of global science considering the possible conflict between the rising power and traditional powers in science.

China’s future involvement in international collaboration is another uncertain consequence to global science. In the past decades, China has been promoting international collaborations through various mobility funding initiatives (Quan et al. 2019 ). The China Scholarship Council, administrated by MoE, annually funds almost 20,000 Chinese scholars for a 6–12-month international stay as visiting scholars (Wu 2017 ), while National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), administrated by MoST, offers funding for foreign researchers to encourage international collaboration (Yuan et al. 2018 ). As Figure 5 shows, the number of international collaboration papers (indexed by WoS) in China has been increasing in the past two decades; however, the ratio of international collaboration papers to all international papers decreased in 2019 and 2020. We are not sure whether the decrease is attributed to the policy reform or due to the pandemic when international mobility was strictly limited (Lee and Haupt 2021 ).

International Collaboration Publications in China (2000–2020)

Two years into the pandemic, the documents issued by MoST and MoE appear more like a communication exercise to appease public anger than the start of a strong policy reform. With the top-down administration model based on the centralized Chinese government, the SCI-based evaluation system was promoted from the top (e.g., MoST, MoE, etc.) and followed by the bottom (e.g., universities, research institutes, etc.). Thus, the MoST and MoE should not shirk their responsibilities and create ambiguous and non-transparent policies (Qi 2017 ; Shu et al. 2020b ) when promoting the policy reform. For example, MoE should reconstruct the Double First Class program that is highly based on ESI indicators (Chen and Qiu 2019 ; Zhao and Ma 2019 ); MSFC, administrated by MoST, should give national publications the same weight as international publications when evaluating funding applications. Chinese universities and research institutes need to receive a clear and consistent signal that the policy reform is not only an armchair strategist.

Indeed, many negative effects don’t originate from the nature of the SCI-based indicators but come from the administrative purpose of research evaluation, which contributed many “beautiful” numbers in terms of the number of publications and rankings rather than real advancement of knowledge. China’s scientific administration should be aware that a successful research evaluation system should be completely merit-based; and the policy reform should start from the top.

In July 2021, the General Office of the State Council of China ( 2021 ) issued another new document providing the principles for designing a new research evaluation system in science and technology, which duplicates most contents of previous documents. Unfortunately, a detailed proposal regarding the new research evaluation system is still missing.

Data availability

Not applicable.

Code availability

Although the first Chinese scientific development plan (Project 863) started in 1986, the milestone of China’s scientific development is Xiaoping Deng’s (China’s former leader) declaration “Science and technology are primary productive forces” in 1988, which has guided China’s scientific development in several decades. In 1993, China legislated the first version of the Law of the People's Republic of China on Science and Technology Progress; in 1995, China initiated the national strategy of “invigorating China through the development of science and education”. As a result, Project 211 and Project 985 were launched in 1995 and 1998 respectively.

CSTPCD, developed by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC) in 1987, indexes more than 2,000 national scientific journals for the purpose of research evaluation of China’s scientists and engineers. The number of papers indexed by CSTPCD and number of Chinese papers indexed by SCI, representing national and international publications respectively, are reported in annual Statistical Data of China’s S&T Papers , and included in the China Statistical Yearbook .

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Shu, F., Liu, S. & Larivière, V. China’s Research Evaluation Reform: What are the Consequences for Global Science?. Minerva 60 , 329–347 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-022-09468-7

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China overtakes the US in scientific research output

Between 2018 and 2020 China published 23.4% of the world’s scientific papers, eclipsing the US

China has overtaken the US as the world leader in both scientific research output and “high impact” studies, according to a report published by Japan’s science and technology ministry.

The report, which was published by Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTP) on Tuesday, found that China now publishes the highest number of scientific research papers yearly, followed by the US and Germany.

The figures were based on yearly averages between 2018 and 2020, and drawn from data compiled by the analytics firm Clarivate.

The Japanese NISTP report also found that Chinese research comprised 27.2% of the world’s top 1% most frequently cited papers. The number of citations a research paper receives is a commonly used metric in academia. The more times a study is cited in subsequent papers by other researchers, the greater its “citation impact”.

The US accounted for 24.9% of the top 1% most highly cited research studies, while UK research was third at 5.5%.

China published a yearly average of 407,181 scientific papers, pulling ahead of the US’s 293,434 journal articles and accounting for 23.4% of the world’s research output, the report found.

China accounted for a high proportion of research into materials science, chemistry, engineering and mathematics, while US researchers were more prolific in research into clinical medicine, basic life sciences and physics.

The report was published on the day US president Joe Biden signed the Chips and Science Act, legislation that would authorise $200bn in research funding over 10 years to make US scientific research more competitive with China.

The Chinese embassy in the US said last month that China was “firmly opposed” to the bill which it said was “entrenched in [a] cold war and zero-sum game mentality”.

The “high impact” finding is in keeping with research published earlier this year , which found that China overtook the US in 2019 in the top 1% measure, and passed the European Union in 2015.

Papers that receive more citations than 99% of research are “works that are seen as being in the class of Nobel prize winners, the very leading edge of science”, study co-author Dr Caroline Wagner said at the time. “The US has tended to rank China’s work as lower quality. This appears to have changed.”

The US still spends more on research and development in the corporate and university sectors than any other country, the report also found. “China has the largest number of researchers in the corporate and university sectors among major countries. In the corporate sector, the United States and China are on par with each other, and both are showing rapid growth.”

“China is one of the top countries in the world in terms of both the quantity and quality of scientific papers,” Shinichi Kuroki of the Japan Science and Technology Agency told Nikkei Asia . “In order to become the true global leader, it will need to continue producing internationally recognised research,” he said.

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Paper Tiger? Chinese Science and Home Bias in Citations

We investigate the phenomenon of home bias in scientific citations, where researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country. We develop a benchmark for expected citations based on the relative size of countries, defining home bias as deviations from this norm. Our findings reveal that China exhibits the largest home bias across all major countries and in nearly all scientific fields studied. This stands in contrast to the pattern of home bias for China’s trade in goods and services, where China does not stand out from most industrialized countries. After adjusting citation counts for home bias, we demonstrate that China’s apparent rise in citation rankings is overstated. Our adjusted ranking places China fourth globally, behind the US, the UK, and Germany, tempering the perception of China’s scientific dominance.

All authors contributed equally. Address correspondence to [email protected]. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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China Has a Plan for Its Housing Crisis. Here’s Why It’s Not Enough.

A new approach by China’s top leaders is bold but pales against the problem: a vast number of empty apartments no one wants to buy.

By Alexandra Stevenson

Reporting from Hong Kong

China has a housing problem. A very big one. It has nearly four million apartments that no one wants to buy, a combined expanse of unwanted living space roughly the area of Philadelphia.

Xi Jinping, the country’s leader, and his deputies have called on the government to buy them.

The plan, announced last week, is the boldest move yet by Beijing to stop the tailspin of a housing crisis that threatens one of the world’s biggest economies. It was also not nearly enough.

China has a bigger problem lurking behind all those empty apartments: even more homes that developers already sold but have not finished building. By one conservative estimate, that figure is around 10 million apartments.

The scale of China’s real estate boom was breathtaking. The extent of its unrelenting bust, which began nearly four years ago, remains vast and unclear.

China’s leaders were already managing a slowdown after three decades of double-digit growth before the housing crisis created a downturn that is spiraling out of their control. Few experts believe that Beijing can transition to more sustainable growth without confronting all those empty apartments and the developers that overextended to build them. All told, trillions of dollars are owed to builders, painters, real estate agents, small companies and banks around the country.

After decades of promoting the biggest real estate boom the world has ever seen, and allowing it to become nearly one-third of China’s economic growth, Beijing stepped in suddenly in 2020 to cut off the easy money that fueled the expansion, setting off a chain of bankruptcies that shocked a nation of home buyers.

It was the first test of Beijing’s determination to wean China’s economy off its decades-long dependence on building and construction to sustain the economy.

Now the government is confronting another test of its resolve. To stop the excesses of the past, it signaled over the last few years that no real estate company was too big to fail. But as dozens of big developers have gone bust, they have obliterated any confidence that remained in the housing market. Officials have since tried everything to restore optimism among buyers. Nothing has worked.

With few buyers, developers that are still standing are also on the brink of default. And they are intricately connected to local banks and the financial system that underpins the government in every village, town and city. One recent estimate, from the research firm Rhodium Group, put the real estate sector’s entire domestic borrowings, including loans and bonds, at more than $10 trillion, of which only a tiny portion have been recognized.

“Right now, not being able to sell homes looks like a risk, but it isn’t. More developers going bankrupt is,” said Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank. The first big developers to default, like China Evergrande, were problems hiding in plain sight.

Evergrande’s initial default in December 2021 set off fears of China’s own “Lehman moment,” a reference to the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, which set off a global financial meltdown. The fallout, however, was carefully and quietly managed through policy support that let Evergrande finish building many apartments. By the time a judge ordered the company to be liquidated five months ago, Evergrande had effectively ceased being a viable business.

But China has tens of thousands of smaller developers around the country. The only way for officials to stop the free fall in the market, Ms. Wang said, is to bail out some midsize developers in cities where the crisis is more acute.

China’s top leaders are instead refocusing the lens to address the millions of apartments that no one wants to buy, pledging to turn them into social housing at lower rents. They have committed $41.5 billion to help fund loans for state-owned companies to start buying unwanted property — altogether equivalent to eight billion square feet, of which a little more than four billion square feet is unsold apartments, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

When Beijing’s response was announced last week, shares in developers initially rallied. But some critics said the initiative had come too late. And most speculated that it would take a lot more money. Estimates ranged from $280 billion to $560 billion.

Officials in Beijing began softening their approach last year. They directed banks to funnel loans and other financing to dozens of real estate companies they deemed good enough to be on a government “white list.”

The support was not enough to stop housing prices from crashing.

Policymakers pulled other levers. They made their biggest cut ever to mortgage rates. They tried pilot programs to get residents to trade in old apartments and buy new ones. They even offered cheap loans to some cities to test out the idea of buying unsold apartments.

In all, local authorities tried out more than 300 measures to increase sales and bolster real estate companies, according to Caixin, a Chinese economic news outlet.

Still, the number of unsold homes continued to reach new levels. Prices of new homes kept falling. So at the end of April, Mr. Xi and his 23 top policymakers began to discuss the idea of taking some of those unwanted apartments off the market in a program not unlike the Troubled Asset Relief Program , which the U.S. government set up in the wake of the American housing market crash.

Last week, China’s most senior official in charge of the economy, Vice Premier He Lifeng, convened an online gathering of officials from across the country and delivered the news: It was time to start buying apartments. Not long after, the central bank loosened rules for mortgages and the central bank promised to make billions of dollars available to help state-owned companies buy apartments.

The move underscored just how worried the government had become about the dysfunctions in the housing market.

Yet almost as soon as state media reported Mr. He’s call on local governments to buy unsold apartments, economists started asking questions.

Would local governments be expected to buy all the unsold apartments? What if they, in turn, could not find buyers? And there was the price tag: Economists calculated that such a program should be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, not tens of billions.

More worryingly, to some, the central bank had already quietly started an apartment buyback program for eight hard-hit cities, committing $14 billion in cheap loans, of which only $280 million had been used. Those governments did not appear to be interested in using the loans for the same reason that consumers did not want to buy houses in smaller cities.

One big difference now, said John Lam, the head of China property research at UBS, the Swiss bank, is political will. The country’s most powerful leaders have said they stand behind a buyback plan. That will put political pressure on officials to act.

“The local government can acquire the apartments at a loss,” Mr. Lam said.

Yet in places where the population is shrinking, which are some of the same cities and towns where developers expanded most aggressively, there will be little need for social housing projects.

The optimistic view is that Beijing has more planned.

“Beijing is headed in the right direction with regard to ending the epic housing crisis,” Ting Lu, chief China economist at the Japanese bank Nomura, wrote in an email to clients.

The task, he added, was a daunting one that required “more patience when awaiting more draconian measures.”

Alexandra Stevenson is the Shanghai bureau chief for The Times, reporting on China’s economy and society. More about Alexandra Stevenson

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China’s Approach to Foreign Policy Gets Largely Negative Reviews in 24-Country Survey

Still, views of china – and its soft power – are more positive in middle-income countries, table of contents.

• Road map to the report
• How views of China have changed in recent years
• Views of China by age group
• How views of China’s international behavior have changed over time
• Most say China does not contribute to world peace and stability
• China seen as interventionist
• How opinions about which country is the world’s top economy have changed in recent years
• Many who see China as the world’s leading economic power also see it as a good thing
• Chinese investment seen as an economic benefit
• How views of Chinese soft power vary by age
• Views of Chinese technology
• How confidence in Xi has changed over time
• How confidence in Xi varies by age
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

This Pew Research Center analysis focuses on public opinion of China and President Xi Jinping in 24 countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific region, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The report explores views of China’s role in the world, including as an economic power, and perceptions of Chinese soft power. This is the first year since 2019 that the Global Attitudes Survey has included countries from Africa and Latin America, which were not included more recently due to the coronavirus outbreak .

For non-U.S. data, this report draws on nationally representative surveys of 27,285 adults conducted from Feb. 20 to May 22, 2023. All surveys were conducted over the phone with adults in Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Surveys were conducted face to face in Argentina, Brazil, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland and South Africa. In Australia, we used a mixed-mode probability-based online panel.

In the United States, we surveyed 3,576 U.S. adults from March 20 to 26, 2023. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for the report , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

Views of China are broadly negative across 24 countries in a new Pew Research Center survey: A median of 67% of adults express unfavorable views of the country, while 28% have a favorable opinion.

Negative views extend to evaluations of China’s international actions. Despite several high-profile diplomatic initiatives by Beijing over the past year – such as brokering a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran and issuing a 12-point proposal for the end of violence in Ukraine – a median of 71% think China does not contribute to global peace and stability.

Most people also think China does not take into account the interests of other countries in its foreign policy (76%) and a median of 57% say China interferes in the affairs of other nations a great deal or fair amount.

Still, attitudes toward China are somewhat rosier in middle-income than high-income countries. Across eight middle-income countries – places Pew Research Center has not surveyed since 2019 due to the challenges of conducting face-to-face interviews during the pandemic – India stands out as the only middle-income country in which a majority has unfavorable views of China. And in three middle-income countries – Kenya, Mexico and Nigeria – a majority even gives China a positive rating.

Fewer in these middle-income countries also criticize China’s global behavior, and many more see China’s “soft power” appeal. Indeed, publics in these middle-income countries offer relatively favorable ratings for China’s entertainment products, its universities and its standard of living – while few in most high-income countries agree.

Across all 24 countries surveyed, however, there is more agreement about China’s technology. A median of 69% describe China’s technological achievements as the best or above average relative to other wealthy nations, with similar shares in high- and middle-income countries. A median of 54% also see China’s military as among the best in the world.

But views of the country as the world’s foremost economic power have faltered somewhat in recent years. More people now name the United States as the top economic power than China (a median of 42% vs. 33%, respectively). Much of this shift has come in high-income countries, where the share naming China has fallen in nearly every surveyed country – including by double digits in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden.

In the U.S., where equal shares (43%) called China and the U.S. the world’s leading economic power in 2022, views have shifted significantly over the past year ; now, Americans are 10 percentage points more likely to name the U.S. than China (48% vs. 38%). (For more on American views of China, read “ Americans are Critical of China’s Global Role – as Well as Its Relationship With Russia ”.)

These findings come from a new Pew Research Center survey conducted from Feb. 20 to May 22, 2023, among more than 30,000 people in 24 countries. Below are some of the other findings regarding China’s overall image, views of Chinese foreign policy, ratings of President Xi Jinping, opinions about Chinese soft power and its economic power.

Overall ratings for China

Across many high-income countries surveyed, which are in North America, Western Europe and parts of the Asia-Pacific region, a large majority has unfavorable views of China, as has been the case for multiple years . Indeed, in almost every high-income country surveyed, negative views currently stand at or near historic highs. In most countries, this does not reflect a significant increase over last year; rather, negative views have simply remained high in recent years. One notable exception is Poland, where negative views have increased 12 points during a period of strained bilateral relations , perhaps related to China’s handling of the war in Ukraine.

Views of China in middle-income countries are relatively more positive. Still, negative ratings in most of these countries have also grown since the countries were last surveyed, pre-pandemic. In South Africa and Mexico, for example, opinions have turned somewhat more negative since 2019, and in Argentina, Brazil and India, negative views have even reached historic highs. In India, military conflicts along a contested border may have contributed to the 21 percentage point increase in unfavorable opinion.

China’s role on the world stage

Majorities in most countries do not think China takes into account the interests of countries like theirs. In Canada, France, Israel, Spain and Sweden, around half or more say China doesn’t consider them at all . Only in the three sub-Saharan African countries surveyed, as well as in Indonesia, does around half or more of the public feel like China listens to their country.

A median of 71% also think China does little or nothing at all to contribute to global peace and stability, compared with a median of 23% who say it is doing a great deal or a fair amount. Australians, Canadians, Indians, Israelis and South Koreans are particularly likely to say China is doing nothing at all to help with global peace and stability.

Most also see China as an interventionist power. A median of 57% say China does interfere a great deal or a fair amount in the affairs of other countries, while a median of 35% say it does not do so much or at all. Around seven-in-ten or more in Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Spain and the U.S. see China getting involved in the affairs of other countries – and many of these places also stood out for the high share who said China’s involvement in domestic politics in their own country was a very serious problem in a 2022 Pew Research Center survey .

But the country which is most likely to see China interfering in the affairs of other countries in this year’s survey is Italy (82%). Italy, which was the only G7 country to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) , was debating leaving the initiative at the time that the survey was conducted, but treading delicately for fear of stoking possible Chinese retribution against Italian businesses.

Attitudes toward Xi

Few in the 24 countries surveyed have confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping to do the right thing regarding world affairs. Across most of Western Europe, the U.S., Canada and much of the Asia-Pacific region, around half in each country say they have no confidence in him at all . Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa stand out as the only countries where a majority or plurality have confidence in his leadership.

Confidence in Xi is closely related to views of China more broadly. In each country surveyed people with unfavorable views of China are more likely to have little confidence in the Chinese president, and vice versa.

Chinese soft power

When it comes to elements often considered part of a country’s “soft power,” China’s technological achievements receive high marks, though fewer say the same about its universities, entertainment products or standard of living.

In fact, outside of South Korea, nearly half or more in every country say Chinese technological advancements are the best in the world or above average relative to other wealthy nations. And in many of the middle-income countries, around four-in-ten call Chinese technology the best in the world.

Middle-income countries – many of which are increasingly reliant on Chinese companies like Huawei for components of their 4G and 5G systems – were also asked specifically about technology such as phones, tablets or computers made by Chinese companies. Across these eight countries, there is a relatively widespread sense that these products are well-made. Middle-income publics are more divided when it comes to their cost: A median of 50% describe them as inexpensive, while 44% call them costly.

They are also somewhat divided when it comes to whether technological products made by Chinese companies protect people’s personal data (a median of 45%) or make their data unsafe (40%). (Americans were asked a different but related question about Chinese social media companies; large majorities have little confidence that they will use personal information responsibly or follow privacy policies.)

In every country, at least a plurality – and often a majority – also see China’s “hard power,” its military, as one of the best in the world or above average.

Chinese economic power

Fewer name China as the world’s leading economic power than the U.S. (a median of 33% vs. 42%). And, in many countries, the share naming China as the world’s leading economy has gone down in recent years.

Interestingly, China’s image as an economic superpower is stronger in high-income countries than middle-income ones. Italy, for example, is the only country where a majority (55%) calls China the leading economic power.

Still, people in middle-income countries do recognize economic benefits from their relations with China. A different survey question, asked only in these countries, finds that around half or more in six middle-income countries say their nation’s economy has benefited a great deal or a fair amount from Chinese investment. In Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, around seven-in-ten or more say this.

In the U.S., Americans were also asked to name the country which poses the top threat to the U.S. Not only was China the top answer, by far, but Americans see it as both an economic and a national security threat – in sharp contrast to Russia, which is primarily seen as a security threat. To read more about this related analysis, see “ Americans name China as the top threat facing the U.S. ”

The chapters that follow discuss these findings and others in more detail:

• Chapter 1 looks at overall opinion of China across the countries surveyed, including how perceptions have shifted over the years
• Chapter 2 considers the negative and positive roles China plays in international affairs
• Chapter 3 reviews global public opinion about which country is the world’s leading economic power
• Chapter 4 explores perceptions of Chinese soft power, summarizing how people across 24 countries rate China compared with other wealthy nations
• Chapter 5 examines confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping to do the right thing in world affairs

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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Wiley Shuts Down 19 Journals Amid Research Fraud Scandal

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Record Numbers of Retractions

Nature’s analysis indicates that the retraction rate (the total number of retracted papers per year divided by the total number of published papers) has more than doubled in the past decade.

Industrialization of Fraudulent Paper Production

The report stated that from 2010 to 2020, the proportion of “red-flagged fake publications (RFPs)” increased from 16 to 28 percent. In 2020 alone, it is estimated that the number of fraudulent papers in the biomedical field exceeded 300,000. The countries with the highest incidence of fraudulent papers include Russia, Turkey, China, Egypt, and India. Among them, China, the largest contributor of all RFPs, accounts for 55 percent of the global total.

The report highlighted that underground paper mills are primarily concentrated in China, India, Russia, the UK, and the United States. If each fraudulent paper sells for an average of $10,000, the industry’s annual turnover could reach $3-4 billion. Not only do paper mills profit, but in some extreme cases, editors and publishers of smaller journals also charge authors for publishing their papers.

With the advent of AI, the industry’s scale is likely even higher now. The biomedical field has become a major victim of paper fraud because the number of published papers is a key criterion for the promotion of doctors and scholars in China.

Rampant Fraud in China

Even Chinese state media acknowledged two years ago that “from birth to death, all documents can be falsified.” This includes medical papers in top international journals, making it unsurprising that other documents can also be fabricated.

In an environment where “everything can be faked,” significant changes have occurred in the thinking and behavior of the populace. Fraud has become commonplace, and trust between individuals is nearly nonexistent.

Approximately three to four years ago, a Chinese immigrant from Guangdong, who had just arrived in New Zealand, needed to handle various proof documents. He informed an Epoch Times reporter that, due to insufficient materials, he used a “fake real driver’s license” made in China. A “fake real driver’s license” means that all the information on the license is accurate, but it is not officially issued; instead, it is produced on the black market.

When asked why he didn’t obtain an official license if all the information was correct, the immigrant replied that dealing with the authorities was too troublesome. The process was costly, time-consuming, and lacked a guarantee of being completed in one go. The black market version was quicker, cheaper, and looked just like the real thing.

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