Government spending on research is a very poor metric. It looks only at expenditure, not results. A comparison of private investment in research in both countries would be a bit more illuminating. The US would come out better, I expect, although the US also spends a lot on wasteful government research.
As a Nature subscriber, I have noticed its drift from scientific reporting to propaganda, and this article was an example. In real (scientific) life, China leads the US in virtually every field of research and application, both in the number of peer-reviewed papers and in their quality. Of the world's top twenty research institutions, seven are Chinese and one is American, for example.
China outspends the USA fourfold on R&D, which should be obvious to anyone who keeps up with Big Science. The PRC spends 2.6% of its $35 trillion GDP on it, compared to 0.8% of our $25 trillion GDP. Chinese corporate R&D–as we see in results from Huawei, BYD and CATL–is similarly ahead of ours.
Nature, like the Federal Reserve, is simply extending the pretence that we are Number One.
I don't know if you read this article well ? The Nature basically rank China ahead. In some fields the US still ahead but I don't see any argument that drag china down in this article. Have you read the Nature Index Science Cities supplement ? They gave China compliment on that. You really went from a rational supporter to an extremist.
Does Nature break down in what countries' journals China's top scientific articles are cited? An acquaintance of mine suggests most such articles are highly rated by being mass cited in Chinese journals. I don't know what to make of it.
I don't have that information, but your suggestion is pretty bias. China papers is as good as US, Europe, Japan... But both have their own oriented. China lead because a huge chunk of their papers are from "Material Science" or "Nano Science" journal or say in another way is applied science journal. For example Advanced Material, Advanced Functional Material, ACS Nano, Nano Letter...
China and USA are only there due to large populations. Their per capita production of science is unimpressive. USA is rank 45 in the world, being beaten by well-known scientific powerhouses like Lithuania, Greece, and Qatar. China is rank 77, similar to Barbados, Russia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Sources seem to conflict here. U.S. R&D as share of GDP is higher than all OECD states except Israel *and* U.S. has higher GDP/capita than almost all OECD states; so R&D/capita should be higher.
I am not sure the Nature Index is as meaningful when divided per capita. There might be diminishing returns for given scores that disadvantage large population states.
Per capita share of top-cited research could be an interesting metric, although there are different ways of defining it. At least from the data above, the U.S. performs significantly better than the EU (admittedly North dragged down by South). One study suggests in terms of top-papers/per capita U.S. does worse that the UK, Germany, and Canada, but better than France, Spain, and Japan. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14691980
Government spending on research is a very poor metric. It looks only at expenditure, not results. A comparison of private investment in research in both countries would be a bit more illuminating. The US would come out better, I expect, although the US also spends a lot on wasteful government research.
As a Nature subscriber, I have noticed its drift from scientific reporting to propaganda, and this article was an example. In real (scientific) life, China leads the US in virtually every field of research and application, both in the number of peer-reviewed papers and in their quality. Of the world's top twenty research institutions, seven are Chinese and one is American, for example.
China outspends the USA fourfold on R&D, which should be obvious to anyone who keeps up with Big Science. The PRC spends 2.6% of its $35 trillion GDP on it, compared to 0.8% of our $25 trillion GDP. Chinese corporate R&D–as we see in results from Huawei, BYD and CATL–is similarly ahead of ours.
Nature, like the Federal Reserve, is simply extending the pretence that we are Number One.
I don't know if you read this article well ? The Nature basically rank China ahead. In some fields the US still ahead but I don't see any argument that drag china down in this article. Have you read the Nature Index Science Cities supplement ? They gave China compliment on that. You really went from a rational supporter to an extremist.
Does Nature break down in what countries' journals China's top scientific articles are cited? An acquaintance of mine suggests most such articles are highly rated by being mass cited in Chinese journals. I don't know what to make of it.
I don't have that information, but your suggestion is pretty bias. China papers is as good as US, Europe, Japan... But both have their own oriented. China lead because a huge chunk of their papers are from "Material Science" or "Nano Science" journal or say in another way is applied science journal. For example Advanced Material, Advanced Functional Material, ACS Nano, Nano Letter...
I certainly don't approve of the sinophobia infecting our academia. We're one human race we need to work together.
China and USA are only there due to large populations. Their per capita production of science is unimpressive. USA is rank 45 in the world, being beaten by well-known scientific powerhouses like Lithuania, Greece, and Qatar. China is rank 77, similar to Barbados, Russia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/scientific-productivity-by-country
Sources seem to conflict here. U.S. R&D as share of GDP is higher than all OECD states except Israel *and* U.S. has higher GDP/capita than almost all OECD states; so R&D/capita should be higher.
I am not sure the Nature Index is as meaningful when divided per capita. There might be diminishing returns for given scores that disadvantage large population states.
Per capita share of top-cited research could be an interesting metric, although there are different ways of defining it. At least from the data above, the U.S. performs significantly better than the EU (admittedly North dragged down by South). One study suggests in terms of top-papers/per capita U.S. does worse that the UK, Germany, and Canada, but better than France, Spain, and Japan. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14691980
Patents seem very gameable.