Conor here: While the author’s equating of science research spending with technological warfare capabilities and US dominance is an unfortunate metric by which to measure its value. The Pentagon is still proposing a $1.5 trillion war budget, after all. Should we only invest in science to “beat” China and boost GDP growth? How about its effect on social welfare of the citizenry?
On another note, while most of the Trump administrtation’s erm, “misadventures” can be explained by graft or a misguided attempt at dominance, what exactly is the America First rational for gutting scientific research? And on that front, Trump on Friday quietly fired all 24 members of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s governing body, which sets the policies of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), approves major funding decisions for NSF, and advises Congress and the president on “policy matters related to science and engineering.”
By Caroline Wagner, Professor of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University. Originally published at The Conversation.
China’s rapid rise in science has hit a milestone. The country’s investment in research and development has reached parity with – and by purchasing power measures has surpassed – that of the United States, according to a March 2026 report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Both nations have crossed the US$1 trillion threshold on research spending.
For 80 years, the U.S. operated the most productive scientific and technological enterprise in human history. Breakthroughs and advances that came from American labs included the internet; the mRNA vaccine; the transistor and its children, semiconductors and microprocessors; the Global Positioning System; and many more.
U.S. scientific and technological leadership was nurtured by sustained public investment in research universities and federal laboratories, as well as a culture of open inquiry. These investments turned scientific discovery into economic strength – accounting for more than 20% of all U.S. productivity growth since World War II.
In contrast, China had previously spent little to nothing on research and development. Some estimates show that China was among the lowest research spenders worldwide in 1980.
As a policy analyst and public affairs researcher, I study international collaboration in science and technology and its implications for public and foreign policy. I have tracked China’s rise across every major database for more than a decade.
The most recent reports showing that China is now outspending the U.S. on scientific and technological research is a turning point worth understanding clearly because, historically, global leadership in one sector – including technology and warfare – feeds into others. U.S. dominance is in question.
China’s Systematic and Unrelenting Rise
China’s R&D spending milestone caps a series of achievements that have arrived in rapid succession.
In 2019, China surpassed the U.S. in its share of the top 1% most-highly cited papers – what some call the Nobel class of research. By 2022, it had taken first place globally in most-cited papers overall.
In 2024, China overtook the United States in total scientific publications – the first time any nation has displaced American dominance since the U.S. itself surpassed the United Kingdom in 1948. Researchers found that China overtook the United States in scientific output even earlier. That same year, China pulled ahead in the Nature Index, which tracks publications in the world’s most selective scientific journals, posting a 17% advantage over the U.S. in outlets long considered the gold standard of scientific excellence.
In 2024, Chinese entities also filed roughly 1.8 million patent applications, compared to the U.S.’s 603,191 applications.
Given these milestones, it’s possible to argue that China is quickly taking the lead in global science and technology. These are not isolated data points. They mark a structural shift in where the world’s scientific frontier is being built.
More Science Is Good – the Problem Lies Elsewhere
China’s ascent is, in one sense, good news. More knowledge, generated by more researchers across more institutions, expands the global pool of discovery from which everyone can draw. The world benefits when science thrives.
The problem is not that China is investing, but that the U.S. is not.
First, the U.S. is divesting from basic, open science. Federal R&D spending in the U.S. peaked in 2010 at roughly $160 billion and fell by more than 15% over the following five years. Federal investment in research and development has been in a long, slow slide – from a peak of 1.86% of gross domestic product in 1964 to about 0.66% in 2021.
The federal government is no longer the largest spender in R&D: It funded about 40% of basic research in 2022, while the business sector performed roughly 78% of U.S. R&D. While not a problem in itself, industry has simultaneously withdrawn from open scientific publication over the past four decades, shifting from research toward development. The result is a shrinking pool of openly shared scientific knowledge precisely as public investment in it also contracts.
Under the second Trump administration, U.S. government science agencies have been slow-walking proposals for new research. Current budget cuts from the White House threaten to deepen cuts to government spending significantly.
The second is the active restriction of scientific exchange: tightening access to U.S. institutions, scrutinizing international collaborations and raising barriers to foreign-born researchers. These policies, though intended as security measures, work against the openness that has historically made American science productive and attractive to global talent.
I describe this issue as an example of the stockyard paradox, in which securing research assets may weaken the very system these measures aim to protect.
Disinvestment Cuts Deeper Than It Appears
The deeper danger for the U.S. economy is that disinvestment and selective engagement in research erodes the capacity to use cutting-edge science regardless of where it is produced.
Absorbing and applying cutting-edge knowledge, whether developed in Boston or Beijing, requires maintaining research institutions and trained workforces, as well as active participation in global networks. This is not a passive process. You cannot free-ride on Chinese science if you have dismantled the institutional and human capital needed to evaluate, translate and apply it.
A nation that hollows out its research base not only falls behind but also progressively loses its ability to benefit from science, including in technologies it is already able to access.
Talent compounds the problem. The U.S. built its scientific dominance partly by being the destination of choice for the world’s most ambitious researchers. The U.S. leads the world in Nobel Prizes, but, notably, 40% of the Nobel Prizes in chemistry, medicine and physics that were awarded to Americans since 2000 were won by immigrants. The flow of foreign talent is not guaranteed. It follows opportunity, funding and openness.
Researchers who might once have come to American universities are finding welcoming alternatives in Europe, China and elsewhere.
A Decision Point, Not a Trend Line
China’s milestone in research funding arrives at a moment when the U.S. is deciding whether to maintain its scientific leadership.
Scientific infrastructure does not decline gradually and recover on demand. Doctoral scientists represent a decade or more of training; tacit laboratory knowledge lives in working research groups, not in documents. Once talented young researchers leave the pipeline – or international talent redirects to other countries – the capacity is very hard to rebuild. Early warning signs are already visible in the U.S. system: thousands of NIH grants terminated, a collapse in international applications and an exodus of early-career scientists.
What is at stake is not a ranking. It is whether the U.S. maintains the institutional capacity – the universities, the federal laboratories, the graduate pipelines, the culture of open inquiry – that made those returns on scientific investment possible in the first place.
China’s rise did not create this decision point, although it brings it into sharp relief. Does the U.S. still want to lead in science? The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonprofit think tank, estimates that a 20% cut in federal research and development starting in fiscal year 2026 would shrink the U.S. economy by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years and reduce tax revenue by around $250 billion. Others point out that the scientific enterprise has contributed at least half of U.S. economic growth.
That is a lot to lose.
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Hmmm… a ton of jingoistic focus here. Science, by its nature in recent development, cannot be limited to any one nation, The development of nuclear science, as if it needs to be repeated, was international, due to scientists leaving Europe to escape whatever the 1930s were (snarc), and landing in the US. Most development in the US was forwarded by foreign scientists, and the US “claiming” superiority does injury to its total truth.
Our industrial history going back to 1830 is a master class in borrowing European inventors and machinery to create a manufacturing base that became the world standard. IS this what irritates us about Chinese policy?
Message – science will develop by international cooperation, or it will die. The US has never grasped that and it looks like it never will.
As a side point, if 80 years is a measure of development, it is all the more impressive considering the active interference and belligerence of the US to China during that entire time.
Agreed on the jingoism. Statements such as –
“For 80 years, the U.S. operated the most productive scientific and technological enterprise in human history.”
– make my head hurt. Especially coming from someone who is not an historian.
Every time I hear such claims, I like to point out the Antikythera Mechanism, which is over 2,000 years old and suggests an industry existing at the time able to make complex machinery and yet to be explained. I’m not as well read in Chinese archaeology, but I believe there are similar finds there as well.
While some individual experiments are performed in a vacuum, science as a whole is not. Everything builds on those who came before, something which hubristic USians would do well to remember.
“I’m not as well read in Chinese archaeology, but I believe there are similar finds there as well.”
Oh, no need to resort to archaeology. There is the famous series Science and Civilisation in China that documents in exhaustive detail the most productive scientific and technological enterprise that was China before the century of humiliation. And now the Chinese are back after that harrowing interlude…
Not American but think that statement is defensible. The very fact that we’re comparing an 80 year period to things like “classical Greece” and “ancient China” speaks volumes. You don’t have to be a shill of the legitimately evil empire to notice that this pace of scientific and technical innovation was truly remarkable and unprecedented. No one had educated such a high number of people to a postsecondary level before.
Never mind using English capital at grand scale.
I’m a STEM assistant professor, and I assume that is leadership in r&d will be lost, it’s just a matter of timing.
As part of my job I teach the history of science, and there are three periods of greatness, ancient Greece, the Renaissance, and Europe 1800-1930. What I conclude is that great societies build great science and great art, so as we decline, so will our art and science. That part is inevitable.
That’s the big picture. More specifically locally, a lot of wealthy elites don’t like universities. They’d rather have tax cuts and less criticism of Israel. A lot of them (e.g. Musk, Ackman, etc) seem to hate academia. For example, Musk recently said that there are no longer any researchers in his companies, only engineers, because researcher is a pretentious term from academia.
It’s a sad situation. I assume my kids won’t have the option to do what I do.
I’m a late career STEM (physics) full professor. The future of basic physical science (I can’t say as much about applied science) in the US looks dismal. Even with better funding, academic sciences had already been increasingly forced to convert into intellectual property mills. We still had some freedom to pursue what we thought was intellectually interesting, by our internal standards. But with our institutions now coming under increasing pressure, our ability to do curiosity-driven work will be further limited.
Quite a narrow focus, eh? How then you explain to your students the origins of algebra and algorithm? Have you had a look at this work, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_China ?
I mention other civilizations as well as does any textbook that I’m aware of.
What the ancient Greeks did, however, is exceptional (to the extent that we have records), and should be portrayed as such, and we should ask people to think about the mystery about how such a civilization did so incredibly well in terms of research and philosophy.
I have a handful of scientific and other heroes. Joseph Needham is one. But while his magisterial work on Science and Civilization in China is just that, it has been noted correctly he “over-egged the pudding” in many cases. His earlier scientific work, much of it superseded because there was no real foundation for developmental biology a hundred years ago, was outstanding and remains a standard account on how to do science. His essays on science up through the 1930s, collected in several books, were even better.
The reason for the gutting is tied directly to the mass amounts of money being poured into AI even in applications where it’s clear the algorithms aren’t capable: elimination of any decent paying jobs or position of authority in society that differs from their worldview. When you read what the men behind Trump write about the rest of society, there is a massive chip on their shoulder about having to hear academics and researchers contradict their policy preferences without any way to destroy their careers. While many investors just want AI to lower their labor costs, the infinitely wealthy at the top care just as much about never having to rely on another human being for expertise. Remember that the Musks, Karps, and Bezos’ of the world aren’t engineers, they’re financiers first. They see no value in human capital beyond its ability to provide a return, so when they see scientists and academics using their platform to push for policies like environmental regulation or progressive social policies, they bristle at being unable to get them fired. Now they believe they can use AI chatbots to replace that work, or outsource what they can’t to low cost offshored precarious labor, and any costs to society will be born by the hoi polloi, not them.
What happens when the plan to fire and replace everybody with the loyal machine god doesn’t work out?
But the deterioration was well underway long before the AI hysteria.
Using PPP is very disingenuous for science – costs are more like 1/10th or even less. For example, I purchased a hydrogen generator directly from China that I have been using for three years now for $800. The comparable US version is $15000-$18000. I have mentioned an inclinometer I use to correct wind measurements on NC before. $160 direct from China – including tariffs, the closest US version is $5000, and US tech support sucks compared to China’s. I could buy the Chinese unit for $800 from a US vendor.
And the cost of a grad student in the US is ridiculous – around 60,000 a year – and a prof needs grad students to do the work as professors are too busy with bureaucracy (overhead is ~54%+ and someone has to pay for all those managers justifying their existence) to do most of the hard work.
The brilliant US solution is AI, so you do not need the grad student – but who trains the next generation of scientists? Meanwhile, I expect a flood of AI slop and hallucinations entering the field as a result, creating a fetid wound in the hallowed memories of US science.
The author, a public policy analyst, should have talked to some scientists. Its way worse than she thinks.
I’ve looked at this in the auto industry context. Until the current Administration, Detroit (which means the area within a roughly 3-hour-driving radius) had become more central to the global auto industry, in that the nexus of suppliers and customers was more concentrated than in Europe, Japan or Korea. Now Shanghai is the undisputed center of the global industry (and the Beijing Auto Show the most important forum to reveal new products and technologies).
To give one example, the cuts to STEM programs undermine the training of new engineering talent. That is amplified by restrictions on immigration – why come to the US for your master’s in EE if you can’t leverage the connections that graduate research creates to find a good initial job? Programs in certain graduate engineering subfields are mostly populated by those on student visas. If you don’t lose your research funding, which is used to pay for the labs and projects on which budding engineers cut their teeth, you may still lose the critical mass of students needed to keep the program running. Without that pipeline of young talent, companies will have to move their R&D centers elsewhere.
As a judge for an auto industry innovation award program since 1994, I’ve seen that happening first-hand. Initially it was setting up satellite engineering centers to move closer to customers – the Chinese domestic market is over 50% larger than the US or European vehicle markets. Those initially focused on sales engineering, the assistance suppliers provide to their customers. Over time those grew into full-fledged R&D centers. I have seen more and more instances where a particular division of a global Tier I suppliers is now in China. Going forward, R&D centers in the US will be downgraded from product development to sales engineering.
The North American auto industry faces additional challenges, as do many other industries. For my take, see https://smitka.substack.com/p/three-strikes-and-youre-out-strategic
It’s not the cuts to the STEM programs that undermine the training of the new talent in automotive industry, it’s the R&D cuts at the automotive companies. In early 2000s GM used to have something like 1800 engineers, by mid 2010s this was down to 300. Massive cuts means they were not hiring new talent, just attriting their existing labour force. Ford and FCA/Stellantis had a similar trajectory.
The big 3 don’t manufacture cars anymore, they assemble them. Whereas before everything was designed in-house, now nothing is. They push a specification down to their suppliers and hope for the best. A high-level friend at GM was complaining that they’ve lost the expertise to evaluate the parts suppliers provide for them, leading to constant issues.
I consulted for Changan in mid-2010s, their main R&D center is in the UK because there was a wealth of engineering talent from the defunct UK automotive companies when they opened it in 2010, a lot of Jaguar and Land Rover guys moved over to them.
This is a wider issue in the Western economies, financialization of the economy led to consolidation, greatly reducing the competition. Less competition means more financial engineering (like stock buybacks) and less actual engineering.
Where does Tesla fit into this? I ask because in the 70s my father was tasked to start up a manufacturing operation in New Orleans, site was across the street from NASA Michoud where Chrysler was building Saturn Boosters for the space program.
…and to voislav
1. For a long time, the centers of innovation have been at Tier I and select Tier II suppliers, not the OEMs. Even there, carmakers have to have the engineering knowledge to integrate what suppliers bring to them. I was at the GM Tech Center in Warren in February, I only saw a couple areas but there were a lot of people even in those. So 300 does not ring true, even in R&D (and certainly not new model development). I’m sure lots were “resident engineers” from suppliers, neither I nor anyone in the group I was with asked.
2a. For the Chinese auto industry (and for Changan), 2010 is a long time ago. Carmakers are now working on an 18 month new model development cycle, and several are on their 3rd EV platform and 2nd PHEV drivetrain. They’ve built up what is now highly experienced engineering staff. Ditto on the production side, 30 mil units last year means a huge number of people with good hands-on experience. From the other direction look up the number of newly minted engineers, from schools that now have experienced faculty with good training in the top global engineering PhD programs. That shift was just underway in 2010.
2b. I’ll be visiting 2 R&D centers in China later this month, a couple divisions of global Tier I suppliers that do their cutting-edge research there, not in Europe or North America. The CTO for one will be there during my visit, so I will find out more. When I was at BYD HQ in July last year they had 100,000 technical staff, but that includes battery chemistry and industrial engineering for battery production, plus their other operations such as cars, all of which started as a way to increase their battery production volumes. (BYD’s now laying people off…)
3. Tesla is basically exiting the auto industry, they have stopped new vehicle development and are at the tail end of the CyberCab project. Without new vehicles, they won’t be bringing any new technology to market. In many areas they’re already well behind most current players in the EV sector – only 400V backbone and (by today’s standards) comparatively slow charging, no lidar/radar/ultrasound in their sensor suite so well behind in self-driving, and now outpaced by Chinese players in the use of large aluminum castings – I’ve seen teardowns of both Tesla and competitors at CareSoft. Tesla was at the forefront, but now everyone (even, in its own way VW, despite the CARIAD fiasco) have or are launching software-defined vehicle architectures, where Tesla once was alone in setting the pace. It’s sad, because Tesla has incredible brand strength (they’re able to sell 10+ year-old models!) and could have been a real player in automotive.
The situation is more dire than this, US has lost the lead 10 years ago. Papers, patent applications, those are all trailing indicators to the quantity and quality of research, it takes years to convert research into those measurable metrics.
The biggest failing is that with research funding cuts over the last 20-25 years, US is failing to nurture the next generation of scientific leaders. Funding squeeze favours established researchers and squeezes out new research. A number of promising young researchers I’ve met in my last stint in academia, 2018-2020, are now out of US now due to lack of opportunity.
The situation is similar with my current academic collaborators, they are all struggling to secure NIH and NSF funding, forcing them to cut staff and scale back research. These are established researchers in their 60s, so I can only imagine what the situation is for young starting professors.
It’s amazing when you think about it. America was powered in the 20th century by the twin engines of its industrial base as well as its huge research establishment. One fed the other and profits were plowed back into yet more research. But in the past fifty years American industry has been packed up and shipped overseas in favour of finance and beancounters. And now you are seeing the American research establishment also being gutted for at best obscure reasons. I myself suspect that it is ideological, especially among Republicans. Even if you wanted to build up that research establishment again, it would be the work of generations and you would need to nurture generations of scientists. But if I were a young scientist, I would be extremely mistrustful that it might happen again in a few more years again and might think it safer to consider working at a scientific post overseas.
Since China steals all of its innovations and discoveries from the United States, Trump—a fifteen-dimensional chess player—is trying to hinder China’s scientific progress by destroying America’s scientific foundation.
A masterful strategy indeed! Who else would have thought of it?