China overtakes US and Western democracies in technology race

China came out on top in the number of scientific developments in many key technological areas, showed study Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). His “Critical Technology Tracker” (Critical Technology Tracker) shows that China leads in 37 of the 44 areas studied, from nanomaterials and robotics to advanced RF communications, defense and space technologies. In particular, over the past five years, Chinese scientists have created 48.49% of the most important scientific papers on modern aircraft engines, including hypersonic rocket engines. Seven out of ten research centers leading in developments in this area are located on the territory of the country.

In second place in the technology race is the United States, which holds the lead in eight areas, including quantum computing and vaccine development. The rest of the countries lag behind by a significant margin. The top 5 in terms of the number of advanced scientific publications most often fall into India and the UK, less often – South Korea, Germany, Australia, Italy. As for Russia, it got into the top 5 in only one area – modern explosives and energy materials. The authors of the study note that many scientific publications are published in Russia, but only a small part of them are among the most cited.

To create a tracker for critical technologies, the experts of the Australian think tank collected a database of 2.2 million scientific publications released in 2018-2022. The top 10 most cited publications in each of the 44 technology areas studied were taken for analysis. In addition, the flow of scientific personnel between countries, the contribution of scientific organizations (universities, companies and laboratories) to the development of certain technologies were studied. After assessing the level of scientific expertise and the concentration of research centers in individual countries, ASPI experts assessed the risks of establishing a technological monopoly. Now there are eight such vulnerable areas, China has seriously pulled ahead in all of them.

Olga Shkurenko