China has overtaken the United States for the first time in terms of the number of leading experts in science and technology, according to a report published by the Chinese company Dongbi Data. Over the five years from 2020 to 2024, the number of leading scientists in China has increased, while in the United States it has decreased.
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According to a report by Dongbi Data released on January 11, there were 36,599 top world-class scientists in the United States in 2020. This number decreased annually and reached 31,781 in 2024. During this period, America’s share of the total number of experts fell from 33% to 27%. China, on the other hand, has shown growth: the number of leading scientists in the country increased from 18,805 in 2020 to 32,511 in 2024, and China’s share of the world increased from 17% to 28%. For the purposes of the study, a “leading scientist” was defined as a researcher who had published significant articles in the world’s major scientific journals. The study authors selected 40,000 highly cited articles published from 2020 to 2024 in 129 leading international academic journals in various disciplines, collected information about the authors and analyzed the data.
Over the past five years, the balance of power in the scientific community on the world stage “has undergone profound changes,” said Wu Dengsheng, founder of Dongbi Data and professor of management at Shenzhen University. China and the US remain leaders, but their dynamics are diametrically opposed. The world’s largest scientific organization turned out to be the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has more than 100 institutes throughout the country and 3,615 leading scientists. This is significantly more than the 1,683 researchers at Harvard University and the 1,208 at Stanford. In 2022, China contributed nearly a third of scientific articles published in the most influential international journals, overtaking the United States for the first time to become the world leader. In the latest issue of the journal Nature, one of the oldest and most prestigious in the West, dated January 8, almost half of the papers are from ethnic Chinese.
Dongbi Data also compiled the Global Top Journals List Across All Disciplines, which purports to be a guide to selecting and ranking international scientific journals. Chinese scientists have long used predominantly Western databases of scientific literature, such as the Science Citation Index, noted Mr. Wu. The new list is designed to reduce the dependence of the Chinese scientific community on international systems. In addition, it may encourage international researchers to accept Chinese academic publications. Ultimately, the initiative can support the scientific and technological development of the country.