China's rise as global scientific powerhouse: A trajectory of international collaboration and specialization in high-impact research

Abstract

The recent and rapid ascent of China into today's scientific powerhouse is increasingly debated in circles of economic politics and policy making. Yet, we still know relatively little how such rise has materialized in terms of Chinese scientists' openness to international collaborations and relative focus on high-impact research, particularly in relation to the U.S. Leveraging a unique, curated database of over 25 million scientific publications from 2008 until 2020, we aim to fill this gap and empirically investigate: (1) the extent to which collaboration of China-based researchers with scientists from other countries has materialized; (2) how competition in producing high-impact research has evolved for China, especially vis-à-vis the U.S., in the global production of science; and (3) whether specialization in well-defined fields has characterized China's ascent in science and, if so, in which areas. Our findings show that China's rise as a leading player in global science has importantly built on opening its knowledge production to collaboration, both domestically and internationally. This has been paired with a remarkable focus on high-impact research. Recently, China has entirely closed the gap with the U.S. in terms of contribution to the global top 1 % high-impact scientific production, specializing in four key fields – engineering/electrical/electronic, materials science, physics, and chemistry. Our study sheds new light on the changing landscape of global scientific production and opens several avenues for future research.