Former Google CEO said that China might soon overtake the US in technology and it was sooner than anyone expected. For the first time in history, China is publishing more scientific articles that the United States and is taking the claim to be the world leader in research and development.
China is now the biggest publisher of scientific articles and according to a report by Science and Engineering Indicators, China is on the verge of becoming or has already become Earth’s scientific superpower. The agency has been tracking China’s progress for quite some time now and back in 2010, it said that there was “no end in sight” for the rising nation.
China’s rise over the past two decades has been really something to look up to. The amount of money that China invests in R&D has increased by 18 % annually. Similar facts include the number of people graduating with a bachelor’s degree in science has risen from 359,000 to 1.65 million between 2000 and 2014 as compared to 483,000 to 742,000 in the US.
The overall message of the latest report is a pretty simple one: “The US global share of [science and technology] activities is declining as other nations – especially China – continue to rise,” NSF officials said on the release of the report.
Despite the fact that China has overtaken US as the biggest publisher, US still gets the most citations after Sweden and Switzerland. This shows that even though China is investing heavily in R&D, they still need to focus more on the fundamental questions.
However, the US is still on the top when it comes to investing the amount of money in R&D. Back in 2015, US invested $500 billion as compared to China’s $400 billion but that amount has flatlined in the states whereas the amount in China is still on the rise and it won’t be long before China overtakes US in this aspect as well.
The pursuit of knowledge benefits the whole of mankind and this increase of knowledge in China is not something to be alarmed about. In fact, we should all learn from the Chinese and take a page out of their books and think about becoming better at it ourselves rather than worrying about how others are going so far ahead.
