American and Chinese scientists are decoupling, too
That will be bad for both countries
THERE ARE lots of ways to measure China’s rise. It is the world’s second-biggest economy, its biggest manufacturer and its biggest creditor. In 2021 it passed another milestone. That year, for the first time, Chinese scientists published more papers than their counterparts in America or the European Union (see chart 1). It is not just the quantity that is improving. The Nature Index, run by the publishers of the journal of the same name, tracks contributions to the world’s best-regarded health and natural-sciences journals. Chinese researchers rank first in the natural sciences, and second overall.
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This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Decoupling comes to science”
From the October 14th 2023 edition
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