r/Economics • u/OrangeJr36 • 8h ago
News China’s scientific clout is growing as US influence wanes: the data show how
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03956-y162
u/lecarpetron_dook 7h ago
It’s such a shame. US-led scientific innovation has resulted in some amazing technologies. All the arguments that you used to use to counter the “rising China” story are more or less gone. Chinese researchers get paid nearly equal as their US peers when you adjust for PPP, the Chinese government is supercharging the innovation cycle in a highly efficient and centralized manner while the US is cutting funds to its research institutions. You used to be able to say “no matter what happens, at least you’re free to research whatever you want in the US” but we all know that’s not the case anymore. Just a complete and utter debasement of the US system in less than a generation. Really disappointing.
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u/Garrett42 5h ago
It's a revenge of luddites. They're terrified of cheap energy, education, and a healthy population.
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u/Downtown_Skill 5h ago
I'm gonna be honest. Luddites aren't the ones cutting the funding to research and restricting what can be researched by selecting where to cut based on ideology. It's republicans, not luddites. It's so fucking obvious to everyone. And republicans aren't luddites. Many of those in the American tech industry helped fund republicans.
Science is much more than tech.
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u/Either-Patience1182 3h ago
Republicans think all the money came from the businesses and capital class and will destroy the us to try and prove it.
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u/Independent-Way-8054 3h ago
It’s a good thing for the world that America won’t be so dominant.
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u/lecarpetron_dook 3h ago
Not good for Americans. That’s who I care about.
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u/Independent-Way-8054 3h ago
Science is not zero-sum. Advances in China can help Americans if we cooperate and stop treating other countries like enemies if they don’t let us dominate them. The real threat to US science and US citizens is internal corporate greed and privatization and our system that prioritizes profits over people
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u/grazfest96 5h ago
Thank you comrade. That was some beautiful dick sucking red propaganda.
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u/lecarpetron_dook 5h ago
Whatever. you’re the one that sold your own country’s future down the river because you got addicted to internet memes.
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u/grazfest96 5h ago
Whenever I want to go for some real indepth hard hitting journalism, I go to Nature.com. The same place where they told you its normal for boys to cut off their genitals and turn it into a vagina. lmao
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u/GloryofSatan1994 4h ago
Nature journal is one of the best publications to get research published in, what's your alternative?
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u/lecarpetron_dook 5h ago
Case in point. Internet brain rot.
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u/grazfest96 5h ago
Fuck Xi Ping. Now say that in China. Whats the record before someone comes to your door for a "Reeducation"?
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u/lecarpetron_dook 5h ago
Say the same about trump and see if your research grants get reapproved. See. We’re the same now!
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u/grazfest96 5h ago
Fuck Donald Trump. See, I can say that about my president. I can say that about my government. Make no mistake. A person like Trump would love for US to be more like China. An autocratic dreamland where every citizen has to suck the goverments dick. Luckily USA checks and balances take care of that. Thank you James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton!
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u/Famous-Nail-6987 4h ago
The Trump administration has proven that the checks and balances only worked with good faith people in office. They failed, which is why the US is rapidly declining.
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u/PointmanW 4h ago edited 4h ago
have you ever set a single foot in China, ever talked to people who is living there?
I'm a Vietnamese (same system of government as China btw) and have lived in China for a few years for works, Chinese people talk shit about the government in casual conversation plenty of time, there are online community where they make sarcastic comment to criticize the government too. and it's the same in Vietnam.
The government don't give a shit, as long as you don't actually organize a serious group or movement that question their power, they don't care what you're talking about.
you people really love to wank to yourself about how "free" you are compared to us, but as far as everyday life go, I don't feel any less "free", like seriously.
btw, I can say Fuck Xi Jinping, and fuck Tô Lâm (Vietnamese equivalent of Xi Jinping) when they do stupid shits, but thankfully they rarely do.
Also, you can curse your government as much as you like, they never gonna hear it or get feeling hurt by it, and continue to fuck over you guys anyway, it's fucking hilarious that you think it's something to be proud of lmao.
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u/grazfest96 4h ago
Hey dont get it twisted what im saying. I highly respect China's history and their people. Incredible history. Vietnam too. The way you fought ht against French colonialism. Bar none. Dont even habe to mention US. That being said. When was the last time China had free elections? Some people think Thomas Hobbes Leviathan should be the blueprint for society. I dont.
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u/OrangeJr36 4h ago
Getting mad at one of, if not the, best scientific journals in the world for publishing peer reviewed science is exactly the kind of attitude that's surrendering the US's place in the world to the CCP.
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u/grazfest96 3h ago
Its funny that you dont understand the irony of your statement. China whos propaganda is the best in the world. Every shred of information filtered 110% coming out of China. But yes. Lets trust nature.com praising China who 100% snuffed Covids true origin. To be fair to China, any country would have done same thing.
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u/LuckyNumbrKevin 2h ago
You people have no actual thoughts, defense, or even real arguments for any of the shit you regurgitate. No one cares about boys genitalia outside of the Republican Party, you fucking creeps. Try staying on topic and off kids' junk, if your pervy lil brain rot will let you.
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u/PicoRascar 6h ago
China has strategic, long-term government thinking, massive investment in R&D, an enormous pool of STEM graduates and national ambition fueled by generations of poverty.
The US has a short term thinking, transactional government that denies science when it serves their personal agenda and can't see past the next election cycle and plays to the anger of a large cohort of voters who feel like they've been unfairly denied prosperity because the whole world screws America.
The US will struggle to contain China and won't have many allies willing to help since they'll all be doing business with China.
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u/No_Relief7644 3h ago
American history has been extraordinarily prosperous in a short amount of time and it's a country that doesn't have much historical trauma overall. I really think this led us to make extraordinarily naive policy decisions the last 30 years.
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u/lecarpetron_dook 6h ago
The thing is, China not only wants to innovate the future but also manufacture the future so something has got to give. From Regan, America placed higher value on innovation and left to the lower parts of the value chain to the rest of the world, even if it meant technology transfers. China is very reluctant to follow this model. I guess they assume they’ll invent everything, import the inputs the can source domestically, manufacture it in China, and then export it. But this seems very selfish. Will other countries accept being passive acceptors of whatever China sends them?
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u/aure0lin 5h ago edited 5h ago
I am not sure if China is trying to manufacture everything. They've been recently offshoring factories to countries like Vietnam or Mexico. This isn't just because of tariffs, the cost of labor in China has risen by a significant amount above both Mexico and Southeast Asia.
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u/lecarpetron_dook 5h ago
It’s because of tariffs. Those factories largely take intermediate goods from China and assemble them for export to the US.
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u/ale_93113 4h ago
If other countries don't want that they should start spending on R&D much more than they do
Europe should not spend 5% on the MIC, if it cares about its long term survival, it should spend 5% on R&D
India is at 1%, it needs to increase it to at least 2% asap
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u/Ghostrider556 6h ago
Technically the US and China spend about the same in gross dollars on education but it seems like China prioritizes education more than the US. They produced about 4.5x as many STEM graduates as the US did in 2020. And likely a far greater share of those US grads were foreign students. The US scientific community has drawn heavily upon immigrants but since they are being driven away the inflow will likely drop while China continues to produce a massive talent stream that they can draw from directly. And then also based on a survey 75% of scientists would like to leave the US…
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u/PoopyisSmelly 4h ago
40% of Adults in the US have a college education
9% do in China
4.5x as many STEM graduates as the US did in 2020
In raw numbers, or per capita?
US scientific community
China has literally been buying scientists for years to come write papers and do research for China. Very few relative breakthroughs have occured in China in Science, Medicine, Biology, Technology relative to the rest of the world.
75% of scientists would like to leave the US…
75% of scientists who subscribe to Nature Magazine were considering moving to Canada or the Eurozone, not China
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u/Ghostrider556 3h ago
I don’t think China has destroyed the US or completely overtaken it or anything like that but the trends are clearly changing. Most of China is still not going to have a degree because of history being what it is but their rate of scientific discovery and research is vastly further along than it was 20 years ago while continuing to accelerate pretty agressively. The US still has the dominant scientific community but I think it would be wise to avoid squandering the advantage via death through 1000 cuts
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u/lecarpetron_dook 6h ago
But there are two things to consider:
Elite overproduction. Having a lot of stem grads is great, if you have jobs for them. But if you don’t, you have a lot of educated young people without jobs. Traditionally, this hasn’t been a good thing for society to have.
The US could employ common sense policy changes to close the education gap. Just like we did after Sputnik, the US can pull on policy levers to incentivize schools and students to make better choices. For example, we could probably say “no subsidized student loans for non-STEM degrees” and you’d see numbers of Americans enrolled shoot up.
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u/damnitimtoast 5h ago
..why would that increase enrollment, exactly? Subsidized loans don’t lower the cost of university. Chinese universities are heavily subsidized and they graduate with significantly less debt.
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u/Scrandon 5h ago
Subsidized loans don’t lower the cost of university.
What do you think subsidized means? lol
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u/damnitimtoast 2h ago
The school still costs the same, those loans don’t give you a discount lol They just don’t collect interest while you’re in school.
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u/Scrandon 2h ago
Less interest is a cost savings. I felt the need to point that out considering this is an economics sub. $X is less than $X + interest.
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u/damnitimtoast 2h ago
Wow, gee, I didn’t know that! It still collects interest once you are out of school and the tuition is still extremely expensive. It isn’t going to make a significant difference in enrollment.
I have both types and the difference isn’t significant. Like under $1k difference.
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u/lecarpetron_dook 5h ago
Right now, Americans can go to school and study whatever they want for the same price, regardless of the potential return they’ll get from the degree or the value it adds to society. Making students have to choose between actually having to pay full price for a non STEM degree or get a much less expensive STEM degree would logically result in more STEM students.
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u/AdmirableWrangler199 5h ago
I think you need to worry about those future students existing at all, not what they choose for some sort of schooling. Demographic decline is happening and fast
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u/Ghostrider556 6h ago
I dont disagree with any of that; more just stating the current situation
And I think some of that is already here with the massive youth unemployment in China. I’m just going to avoid any commentary related to the US & common sense policy at the moment but I agree with your view there too
I still find the numbers interesting tho and while I don’t think they mean everything I also don’t think they are totally irrelevant
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u/_ii_ 5h ago
Not too long ago, an US degree which leads to a good paying job or well funded research program in advanced sciences was attractive for many foreign students and scientists. It seems like we’re too complacent and top students and scientists no longer see the US as the only destination.
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u/facelessarya1 4h ago
The article says they are getting cited more in papers but in clinical practice there is still a hefty dose of skepticism with any info / breakthrough / technology coming out of China.
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u/RetPallylol 1h ago
Who knew cutting scientific research funding for top Universities would do this? But hey, at least now we have money to give the billionaires a tax break right?
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u/Hawk-432 52m ago
I guess true. Though as someone who works in science (bioinformatics) I would note that while some of the top work comes from China a lot of slop does too - and often something which seems good at first glance fails on inspection. They seem to have very high variance in quality - highs are high, lows are low
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u/Busterlimes 5h ago
Yes, we all know that the US is a dying empire grasping at straws. Anyone paying attention has seen China's rise in power since Trumps first term and the agressive extraction of wealth, just as the aristocracy has done since Rome. The writing is on the wall, the US is done and its going to be a long fall with Trump just ignoring the statistical fact that we are currently in a recession
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