China has overtaken the United States for the first time in the number of its high-level science and technology experts, according to a new report.
Analysing data for the five years from 2020 to 2024, the report also shows that the number of top scientists in China has risen, while the number in the US has fallen.
According to the report released by Shenzhen-based data technology firm Dongbi Data on January 11, there were 36,599 world-leading scientists in the US in 2020, a total that declined each year to 31,781 in 2024. Over that time, America’s share of the global talent pool dropped from nearly 33 per cent to 27 per cent.
In contrast, the number of leading scientists in China increased from 18,805 in 2020 to 32,511 in 2024, with its global share rising from 17 per cent to 28 per cent.
For the purposes of the study, a “high-level science and technology talent” was defined as any researcher who had published influential papers in the world’s top journals.
The team behind the report sampled more than 40,000 highly cited key papers published between 2020 and 2024 in 129 top international academic journals across a range of disciplines, then extracted information about the authors and collated the data.
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