China narrows gap with US in scientific research activity amid trade war
- National think tank the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the world’s largest research organisation, has about 60,000 researchers
China is narrowing the gap with the United States in terms of cutting edge scientific research activity, despite a protracted trade and tech war between the world’s two largest economies.
National scientific think tank the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and US firm Clarivate Analytics jointly announced that finding on Tuesday at a forum in Beijing, where they released reports on the hottest and emerging areas in scientific research from 2013 to 2018, as well as a comparison on national performance across 137 research fronts.
China achieved a score of 139.68 in terms of Research Leadership Index (RLI) this year, behind the US mark of 204.89. RLI, which measures a country’s degree of research activity, takes into account the number of core scientific papers published and citing papers, as well as their respective citations. China improved from its RLI score of 118.38 last year, while the US mark declined from 227.39 in the same period.
“As China’s foremost think tank, we need to have solutions in accurately forecasting the development trends in science and technology, providing research basis for China to better support its blueprint in science and technology development,” said Bai Chunli, president of CAS, in a statement.
The CAS is recognised as the world’s largest research organisation, employing about 60,000 researchers last year. That is nearly twice the size of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, which had a staff of 33,000 last year, according to a report by scientific journal Nature.
Rounding out the top five countries in terms of RLI performance this year are the UK, Germany and France with scores, respectively, of 80.85, 67.52 and 46.30.
In June this year, the Chinese government issued a document on improving academic integrity among scientists, in which it describes honesty as the “bottom line”.
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China’s improved RLI reflects a determination in Beijing that the country not lose out in the global race to study and master the next wave of advanced technologies. For China, achieving self-reliance in technology deemed crucial to the country’s military and economic security has taken on added urgency after Washington recently added more Chinese hi-tech firms, including telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Technologies, to a US trade blacklist.
The CAS and Clarivate have identified 137 research fronts, which cover 100 hot and 37 emerging specialities spanning 10 broad areas. These fields include geosciences, clinical medicine, physics, biological sciences, chemistry and material sciences, and mathematics, computer science and engineering.
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