China rises as global scientific collaboration undergoes structural shift

A new analysis released by Clarivate and featured on Nature shows that global scientific collaboration is undergoing a structural shift, with China becoming a central player as its research capacity and international partnerships expand.

Using 25 years of citation data from the Web of Science – the world's largest citation index – Clarivate found that China is deepening cooperation with Europe while extending its reach into Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. This expansion accompanies China's sharp rise in domestic research strength: its output has more than doubled over the past decade, and it surpassed the United States in 2020 as the world's largest producer of research papers. The data also suggests China is poised to lead in citation impact.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is facing a sustained decline. Citation influence of U.S. domestic research has fallen for decades and dropped faster after 2018 as other nations advanced. Analysts link this trajectory to policies that reduced research funding, restricted international students, and disrupted work on vaccines and climate issues. U.S. publication volume has also yet to fully recover from the pandemic.

Chinese experts attribute China's momentum to long-term policy planning, a comprehensive talent-training pipeline, and a research environment that integrates academia and industry. They note that China-Europe cooperation continues to strengthen because the two sides offer complementary strengths – Europe in basic research and China in application and industrialization – supported by streamlined collaboration processes.

The analysis warns that global science may suffer if barriers to information-sharing and cross-border cooperation grow in the name of security or competitiveness. Ohio State University scholar Caroline Wagner observes that an era of relatively free academic exchange is fading as political boundaries tighten.

Even so, experts argue that scientific progress depends on both competition and collaboration. As China-U.S. relations evolve, the global research network is being reorganized toward a more multipolar structure – one in which China is assuming an increasingly influential role.