A study done by a technology tracker run by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) — an independent think tank, indicates that China is leading research in nearly 90% of the crucial technologies that "significantly enhance, or pose risks to, a country's national interests."
The tracker measures not a country's overall strength in critical technologies but its research performance in them. It does so by focusing on high-impact research, the 10 percent most cited research papers. A country's five-year performance between 2020 and 2024 is taken as a lead indicator of its future science and technology capability.
The 10 new technologies that have been added to it are key to strategic advantage, including advanced computing and communication, artificial intelligence, and emerging neurotechnologies relevant to human-machine integration. The dataset has also undergone a full refresh to ensure accuracy and comparability.
The updated picture is stark. China's exceptional gains in high-impact research are continuing, and the gap between it and the rest of the world is still widening. In eight of the 10 newly added technologies, China has a clear lead in its global share of high-impact research output. Four—cloud and edge computing, computer vision, generative AI and grid integration technologies—carry a high technology monopoly risk (TMR) rating, reflecting substantial concentration of expertise within Chinese institutions.
In total, China now leads in 66 of the 74 technologies tracked, with the United States leading in the remaining eight—an imbalance that underscores why trusted partners need to act together to leverage comparative advantages, reduce concentration risk and shape the trajectory of critical technologies together.
The historical data for these new technologies tells a familiar story: an early and often overwhelming US lead in research output in the opening decade of this millennium, eroded and then outmatched by persistent long-term Chinese investment in fundamental research. In total, China now leads in 66 of the 74 technologies tracked, with the United States leading in the remaining eight—an imbalance that underscores why trusted partners need to act together to leverage comparative advantages, reduce concentration risk and shape the trajectory of critical technologies together.
The ASPI team based its analysis on a database that contains more than nine million publications from all around the world. It ranked nations in each technology by identifying the top 10% of the most-cited papers produced by researchers in a country over a five-year period, between 2020 and 2024, and calculated that country's global share.
Paywalled Nature article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-04048-7?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20260102
Original study:
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/aspis-critical-technology-tracker-2025-updates-and-10-new-technologies/
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 07, @06:21PM (5 children)
In the USA science is "woke and gay" and the government funding it is evil communism.
(Score: -1, Troll) by ChrisMaple on Thursday January 08, @04:17AM
The damage to the reputation of science over the last 5 tears is entirely due to Fauci. He claimed that he represented science, and too many people believed him. His lies never stopped. At his feet are the corpses of millions of COVID victims.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 08, @10:10AM
You know what technology China is best at? Psychological warfare. So far, they have convinced about half the US population to act favorably to them without those people even realizing it. The Nature article was probably written by such people. It doesn't mean it's the reality.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 09, @10:11AM (2 children)
Then perhaps USA science should be less "woke and gay" then. If you care to RTFA it's not just the US that is declining on the better of the metrics they are using (Proportion of top 10% of publications)* but the EU and UK as well. Coincidentally these are some of the countries where, IMHO, academic institutions have been most parasitised by woke activists and ideologies. Also the decline has clearly begun well before the rise of Trumpism in the US.
Really though the findings of this report are the result of the amount of investment the Chinese government has made over a long period of time in science based research more than weakness in western science (Wokism is mostly confined to Faculties of Humanities and Schools of Education....for now).
* The report also links to dashboards showing differences in publication volume and h-index, which are fairly rubbish measures. I'm guessing the data source here is Clarivate as these are the sort of metrics that their analytics tools barf out (from memory). Another less legitimate reason for the result may be the increase in the number of Chinese and Indian journals in the dataset. Datasets of academic publications are rarely static and this needs to be accounted for (why yes, I am sometimes involved in academic performance evaluation - and your hate only makes me stronger /_o_(%)_o_\ )
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Friday January 09, @11:11AM (1 child)
I agree that this is probably due to underinvestment in western universities and more recently a lack of support of scientific research. Trump certainly does bear some of the responsibility for this, but so too do previous governments.
I most certainly do NOT agree that this is due to wokism or homosexuality. This claim is unproven, unjustified and out of place in this discussion. It appears simply to be an poor attempt at further politicising this discussion.
The lack of investment started long before Trump or Fauci, who incidentally has had no influence with a similar lack of investment in Europe. The world does NOT revolve around what happens in the US to the extent that you are claiming. China has been working on this for decades.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 10, @03:32AM
I'm the AC whose post you replied to. Perhaps I should have included sarcasm tags in that first sentence? I was making no claims about homosexuality. Wokism yes, and no, I have no proof - my point was that this explanation fits the data better than the explanation that the OP had implied, who had already made an essentially (US centric) political statement. And, as I said, and you seem to agree with at least somewhat, neither explanations account for the biggest factor in the result.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday January 07, @09:48PM (2 children)
It's a list. Someone has to be number one. Does it matter all that much if the difference between number one and number two is more or less insignificant and could change at the drop of some MacGuffin.
From the little table in the article/report China has a high "technology monopoly risk" (TMR) in fields such as Cloud and Edge Computing, Computervision, Generative AI and Grid Integration Technologies. A medium TMR in Digital Twins, Brain Computer Interfaces, Neurophrosthetics and Precision Agriculture. Finally a low TMR in Extended Reality and Geoengineering. I'm not even sure what all those things are but about half of them sounds like mumbo jumbo and things I'm not sure anyone gives two rats arses about. Except for in this report of cause where these things are super scary.
Computer vision sounds kind of important. The other high TMR once? Not so much. Oh now not the generative AI crap ... however will we survive without that. It might be better in the future but today? It's crap. They can take the lead in the slop generation if they want to. More and better cat videos and weird manga like porn. WHoooo ....
There seems to already be more "cloud" crap that is needed, definitely more Generative AI crap then anyone needs. Not even sure what constitutes "Grid Integration Technologies". But I guess it's things that you connect to a grid of some kind. So power generation? Batteries? Yes I'm to lazy to read the full report. But I guess that could be important.
Is "Digital Twins" something we won't be able to live without? I'm sure I can get along without one. I don't want any AI agent to act on my behalf anywhere. Unless the my Digital AI Twin can do all the boring things such as talking to all the other slop AI twins. Brain Computer Interfaces. No thanks. Neuroprostetics, that sounds very useful and so does the precision agriculture.
Extended Reality? Is that the glasses things and such all over again? Nobody wanted it the first or the second or the whatever time. They have not EVER gotten Virtual Reality to be a thing, then the metaverse bull, it this trying to flog that dead horse again but with a new name? Geoengineering that sounds useful to.
As noted it seems a lot of these things are connected or at least adjacent in the same Venn diagram. One might not be a things without the other such as Precision Agriculture and Geoengineering or Brain Computer Interfaces and Neuroprosthetics. Etc. Or if you have the lead in one of the things you are more or less also the leader in a bunch of adjacent once.
But since I'm not in China or the USA I'm not quite sure if I should care all that much how has the technology lead in that regard. At one time it might have been easier to say who was the good guy. But today? Not so much.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 07, @11:09PM
That's not what digital twins are. They're simulations of complex systems like factories or vehicles or hospitals that can help detect when expected values and actual values don't match, possibly detecting problems early and keeping the system working.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Thursday January 08, @10:15AM
I think the original report is overblown - it comes from a bunch of PR folks - but there is a seed of truth that is hard to deny. China is coming on fast, they are taking over in a number of significant fields in tech and industry. It's no longer crappy bits of plastic coming from China, its computers, cars, etc and in a few years time it will be superconductors, quantum computers and fusion reactors unless US (and Europe) pulls its thumb out of its arse. Europe is ramping investment that. US is doubling down on thumb-in-arse.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RedGreen on Wednesday January 07, @09:59PM (1 child)
This is what happens when you have governments focused on the future of their country and how to best make that happen positively. Not the current western system where everyone in government is focused on which company is going to pay the biggest bribe money, ooops campaign contribution, to have the government act in their favour. Or where you can use government as a weapon against the freedom and best interests of your own people like of many of them are focused on. The Chinese government despite being murdering scum do have that focus on doing what is best for most of their people that are Chinese. The poor bastards that are part of the minorities well they are the disposable ones they could care less about and are better off being eliminated in their view. All that does is give them more room to expand into the places they have occupied but are now being emptied of by that policy. The trend is only going to worsen as the Chinese continue their laser like focus on keeping it up and passing in these technologies. While we in the west continue to fight the undeclared civil war the fascists among us wage upon our governments, institutions and people lead being led by the parasite corporations and the billionaire owner looking to become trillionaires who control them fascists by turning us all into complaint little serfs for their amusement by toying with us any time they so choose to do so.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday January 08, @06:46AM
So who doesn't have the current "western system" and is relevant to this story? It's definitely not China.
Bullshit. We have decades of choices that their government made between "doing what is best for most of their people" and perpetuating the Chinese government and its power. "Most of their people" lose every time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 08, @12:06AM (2 children)
There's only 1 metric worth bothering with. Is anyone using their shit? It's all very well making the Business Insider Top 100 list but unless people depend on your algorithm or idea or discovery then it's all marketing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 08, @01:41AM
They are. And they have a huge population.
The West is becoming just a side show to them.
(Score: 5, Touché) by driverless on Thursday January 08, @03:35AM
Half the planet runs on Chinese stuff. I may use a US search engine to look up crap on the Internet but when I make my coffee, mow my lawn, make a phonecall, or access said US search engine, the thing I use is Made in China.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rich on Thursday January 08, @04:07AM
In a month, it will be 100%. No more Crucial in the West.
https://investors.micron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/micron-announces-exit-crucial-consumer-business [micron.com]
SCNR
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 08, @10:04AM (1 child)
It's often easier to copy stuff once someone has gone to all the trouble of making something work AND convincing enough to use it.
It's only a big deal if you don't have or lose the capability to copy whatever they are doing/making that you actually want to copy.
For bonus points copy and make it better. Then we might actually get more actual progress.
The big deal to me seems like too many companies (especially US) are actually making things WORSE for their customers, to the extent that enshittification became a word. That's not how we'd get actual progress.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PiMuNu on Thursday January 08, @10:25AM
No. China *is* investing in R&D - that's the point of the report. They are investing in superconductors and fusion and quantum computers and starting to pull ahead. I have seen it first hand in my field, where they are now equal to the best in Europe or US.