Nine of the world’s top 10 research institutions are now Chinese.

The latest Nature Index rankings reveal an astonishing trend: nine of the world’s top 10 research institutions are now Chinese

To fully appreciate China’s meteoric rise, one must look back at the academic landscape a decade ago. When the Nature Index Global rankings were first released in 2014, only eight Chinese universities made it into the top 100. Today, that number has more than quintupled, with 42 Chinese institutions now ranking among the world’s best

One of the most notable policy shifts has been the move away from publication-based evaluation metrics. Previously, Chinese academics were incentivized to publish as many papers as possible, often at the expense of quality. However, recent reforms have introduced a more rigorous peer-review system that prioritizes impactful and innovative research over sheer volume. This shift has resulted in a significant improvement in the credibility and global influence of Chinese scientific output.

    • Teknikal@eviltoast.orgEnglish
      24·
      1 个月前

      Americans at least the ones on YouTube (not a fair Demographic I admit) seem in utter denial about China surpassing them in things.

      Its Taiwan I feel bad for as I don’t think the US is even capable of saving it anymore and it looks like China may have noticed.

      • aesthelete@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 个月前

        The US was still #1 in manufacturing but China was getting close to overtaking us. I’m certain they will now.

  • AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.spaceEnglish
    382·
    1 个月前

    I’m gonna be real here, just Realpolitik-wise from the perspective of “the West” sans the USA - China is currently proving that they are simply more reliable in geopolitics and even economically, and that is just damn important, even in an adversarial relationship. It isn’t even because they are a de-facto dictatorship, Russia is one too, and Russia is a mad dog. They just managed to keep their shit mostly together so far, still riding out their massive growth spurt. Even human rights abuses outside of Realpolitik don’t seem as the argument they were: internationally, the US has always had a more greyish record anyhow. But now, considering the US is quickly doing its best to catch up in domestic tyranny, that argument seems to be going fast, too.

    Sadly, I don’t have huge hopes for China to be a proper “better” hegemon globally, if that should be what ultimately happens - they are facing crises of their own, and have been dabbling in their own brands of economic imperialism, and at least the way their military is gearing up contains a lot of stuff usually used for military imperialism as well.

    • arafatknee@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      31·
      1 个月前

      The US has been a brutal empire to anyone outside the supplicant, mostly white European, nations of the West.

      The kicker is the US has no one to blame for it’s decline but itself. It has descended into a techno-military industrial oligarchy addicted to Eurodollar deficit spending and cheap credit. It burned up the global order it created in pointless wars in the Middle East and supporting it’s genocidal settler colony in Palestine.

      Once countries transition away from using the dollar it is really fucked.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.worldBannedEnglish
    282·
    1 个月前

    Please, oh please do or do not research in Chinese. I’m too old to give a flying fuck. But it would be hilarious if suddenly the world had to learn Chinese to be able to use the research results.

    • Damage@feddit.itEnglish
      105·
      1 个月前

      I’d like to learn Chinese (which one though?), but I’m afraid I never will. LLMs may help with translation, though.

      • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.mlEnglish
        155·
        1 个月前

        Mandarin is the most accessible and widely spoken, Cantonese is good if you want to spend a lot of time in the south. Good luck if you want to learn one of the hundreds of other dialects, maybe make a friend from one of the places and have them help you.

        • kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          1·
          1 个月前

          I thought they were identical written languages but different spoken. Surely if you were learning to read research papers it wouldn’t matter.

          • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            1 个月前

            There’s differences in the languages even written, for example in mandarin thank you is 感谢/谢谢 whereas in Cantonese it’s 多謝 or 唔該 depending on context. Cantonese also typically uses traditional characters rather than simplified. That second character up there in 多謝 is 谢 but in traditional rather than simplified. I’d imagine most research papers are going to be in simplified Chinese with mandarin phrasing, but learning traditional characters and going to simplified might be easier than learning simplified and then going to traditional.

    • IndustryStandard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      1 个月前

      Trump just scrapped the commie department of education so free market capitalism can once again save Americs. Education will trickle down from above.

  • BrightCandle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    213·
    1 个月前

    One of the issues here is that being a Chinese paper in any field is still the most correlated with the paper being faked in some way. So while china is producing a lot of science and good science its also the world leader in garbage fake science too and it needs to get a handle on the problem.

    • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      1 个月前

      i rarely hear good research papers out of china, unless its something like botany, or plants,animals that require cooperation with other universities all over the globe. plants because china has a megadivesity of flowers specifically.

      • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        1 个月前

        not at the rate of china, and fake papers are usually scrutinized more in the us, and they do produce alot of low quality papers, mainly its because PHDs have a hard time getitng jobs, so they have to write dozens of papers before even being noticed by a employer, most of the time its academic employers. it will be hard to get past some scrutiniy, since your papers have to get published on a well respected journal eventually, like nature,etc. other journals journal of new england medicine, lancet, science journal.

    • Not_mikey@slrpnk.netEnglish
      12·
      1 个月前

      And deport all the PHDs who criticize it. That’ll get us back in the top spot academically.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    1 个月前

    Hope this reduces cheating in Chinese scientific literature because China overtaking US academia is a pretty bad sign when to comes to trust academia otherwise.

  • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    1 个月前

    in the us they have same problem, as publishing too many low-quality papers as well. especially when they are trying to get jobs in academia, when i went to one of those “talks, orientation” one researcher at to write 40+papers before even looked at by a university employer. they care more about quantity over quality, basically they see the amount you have written equal to quality of research.(not a PHD myself), also that many in the phd are abandoing thier fields, because of the above issues, plus job prospects. why chinese research isnt trusted, was probably because of thier quality of reasearch, plus they fudge thier results alot too, and they have issue of industrial and research espionage going on blatantly.