China Leads Research in 90% of Crucial Technologies
PiMuNu writes:
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/
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