China Tops US in Scientific Paper Citations... Korea Also Surpasses Japan

China Surpasses US in Top 3 Indicators of Excellent Scientific Papers
2018-2020 Natural Science Field
China Has More Top 1% Papers Than US
Also Surpasses US in Top 10% Papers
Significantly Leads in Number of Science and Technology Researchers

South Korea Rises 2 Ranks from 10 Years Ago to 11th
Has More Than Japan, Which Dropped 6 Ranks

Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting and providing guidance at the Seed Research Institute in Sanya, Hainan Province, southern China, last April. Photo by Xinhua

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Ji-eun] China has surpassed the United States in all three major indicators related to outstanding natural science papers. Since science and technology are directly linked to industrial competitiveness, there is an analysis that the possibility of China overtaking the U.S. economy in the future has increased. The gap in science and technology papers between South Korea and Japan has also narrowed.

On the 10th, Japan's Nihon Keizai (Nikkei) newspaper reported, citing a recent report published by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Science and Technology Policy Research Institute, that China ranked first in all indicators representing scientific and technological competitiveness.

According to the report, based on data from the UK research firm Clarivate, an analysis of the number of citations of natural science papers from 2018 to 2020 showed that China was the country with the most top 1% cited papers (top papers) in academia.

China's number of top 1% papers totaled 4,744, surpassing the U.S.'s 4,330. The share of cited papers was also led by China (27.2%) over the U.S. (24.9%). This is the first time China has surpassed the U.S. in the number of top papers.

Top papers are those cited within the top 1% frequency among major papers and are used as an indicator to measure research achievements and quality. Japan measures technological and industrial competitiveness between countries based on the average number of scientific papers published annually over the past three years.

Additionally, the number of papers ranked in the top 10% in terms of attention also saw China recording 46,352, surpassing the U.S.'s 36,680. China has already overtaken the U.S. in this area since last year.

The number of researchers in science and technology also surpassed the U.S. As of 2020, China had 2.28 million researchers, significantly ahead of the U.S.'s 1.59 million and Japan's 690,000 as of 2021.

Regarding this, Nihon Keizai explained, "Gaining an advantage in academic research makes reversing industrial competitiveness a reality."

China is advancing the construction of a scientific powerhouse at the national level. It has set a long-term goal of becoming a science and technology innovation powerhouse by 2050, known as the "Rise of Science," and is actively fostering scientific talent. President Xi Jinping also emphasized the importance of securing scientific and technological competitiveness during his inspection of a semiconductor-related company located in Wuhan, Hubei Province, last month.

Amid escalating U.S.-China tensions over Taiwan, China's investment in science and technology is expected to expand further. This is because China needs to establish a self-reliant economic system to avoid damage when facing economic sanctions in the future.

According to Nihon Keizai, China's R&D expenditure in 2020 was 571 trillion won, 2.5 times higher than in 2010. Although it still falls short of the U.S.'s 697 trillion won, it is rapidly catching up. China plans to increase the proportion of basic research funding in total R&D expenditure from 6.1% in 2021 to 8%.

China has also challenged fields such as environmental science, including decarbonization, and artificial intelligence (AI). In the currently low-cost perovskite solar cell field, its performance is comparable to South Korea, which ranks first globally.

Professor Keisuke Kouda of the University of Tokyo told Nikkei in an interview, "China's political system, which can allocate budgets in a top-down manner led by the state, will work advantageously for technology development."

However, he pointed out that a closed national system could hinder the free development of science and technology. Professor Kouda said, "Due to U.S.-China conflicts and China's city lockdown policies for COVID-19 prevention, studying abroad in the U.S. is blocked. The party leadership's control may impede scientists' free research."

Meanwhile, the survey results also showed that the gap between South Korea and Japan in the natural science paper field has narrowed. Ten years ago, Japan was among the leading countries in scientific papers attracting academic attention, but it has fallen out of the top 10 in the past decade.

In the ranking of countries holding top 1% papers, Japan ranked 12th, dropping two places compared to ten years ago. In contrast, South Korea rose two places from 16th to 14th over the same period. South Korea also led Japan in the number of top 10% cited papers, ranking 11th compared to Japan's 12th. The Japanese academic community cited a shortage of research management personnel and technical staff as reasons for the decline in Japan's scientific paper competitiveness.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.