Why the U.S. and Europe Have Little to Fear From the Rise of Chinese Science

Much is made of China’s rise as the world’s next great power. China is forecasted to surge past the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2024, according to analysis by JPMorgan Chase & Co. And according to a recent study, China has already nearly eclipsed the United States and other Western nations as the world’s leading center for science. (The Chinese churned out nearly 3.5 million STEM graduates in 2010, compared to the U.S.’s 4.5 million, a 43 percent increase over just a decade earlier). China’s scientific output has risen precipitously over the past decade or so, increasing at an 18 percent annual clip. That outpaces even the growth of its economy, which has expanded at a rate of roughly 10 percent a year. Beijing is now the leading center for scientific publications in the world, toppling London, Tokyo, Paris, New York, San Francisco and Boston in 2010, with Shanghai rising to twelfth place (see the chart below).

But a forthcoming study in Environment and Planning A by Swedish regional economist David Emanuel Andersson, an Asia and China expert, and his team finds U.S. and European cities have little to fear from the rise of China’s scientific centers. Even as the volume of China’s scientific output has exploded and its major cities have risen to the top ranks, the quality and impact of Chinese science and its major science hubs lag far beyond those of the U.S. and Europe. As Andersson points out, Chinese science occupies a “peripheral position” in the global scientific community. And despite its meteoric rise, “[e]ven Beijing lacks the international orientation and citation impact of Western cities with similar publication volumes, such as London or Paris.”