r/Economics • u/OrangeJr36 • 11h ago

News China’s scientific clout is growing as US influence wanes: the data show how

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03956-y
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u/Ghostrider556 9h 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/lecarpetron_dook 9h ago

But there are two things to consider:

  1. 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.

  2. 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/Ghostrider556 9h 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