Top American scientist warns China could soon overtake US in STEM leadership

National Academy of Sciences president Marcia McNutt notes ‘worrying trends’ in China’s rising R&D spending, published studies

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The US and China spent US$806 billion and $668 billion, respectively on R&D in 2021, but China’s rate of investment rate was twice that of the United States, according to Washington’s inaugural State of the Science address. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 9:00pm, 10 Jul 2024Updated: 9:39pm, 10 Jul 2024

The US appears to be losing the race for global scientific leadership to China but could counter the trend by adapting to the emerging research environment and trying “new things”, according to a senior American science official.

Delivering last month’s inaugural State of the Science address in Washington, National Academy of Sciences (NAS) president Marcia McNutt said the US was still the world’s biggest investor in research and development, but it would not be long before China took over.

The US spent US$806 billion versus China’s US$668 billion on R&D in 2021, but China’s rate of investment was twice that of the United States, said McNutt, a geophysicist and the first woman president of the NAS since its establishment in 1863.

McNutt is also the first woman editor-in-chief of Science magazine, and was elected as a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2019.

Since the end of World War II, the US had been “not just world-leading but world-dominating” in science and engineering, accounting for nearly 60 per cent of all Nobel Prizes ever awarded, she said.

Meanwhile, China has been catching up quickly in both the quantity and quality of papers published, while doubling the number of patents filed by the US in 2021. “This all suggests to me that there are very worrying trends.”

Various ranking methods, including those used by analytical institutions in the US, Britain and Japan, all suggest that China has surpassed the US in the number of most-cited papers, a key measure of research impact.

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