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The pandemic is challenging China’s breakneck race to the top of science

The country is rapidly gaining on the United States in research, but problems could slow its rise: part 5 in a series on science after the pandemic.
  1. David Cyranoski

    1. David Cyranoski reports for Nature from Shanghai, China.

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Cartoon showing a head with a globe and Chinese flag on the left and a head on the right where the globe is falling away

Illustration by The Project Twins

When COVID-19 hit, China was close to surpassing the United States as the leading science funder, two years after it took top place as the biggest producer of scientific articles. And the country has boosted science around the world by supplying other regions with graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, who now number in the hundreds of thousands a year.

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Nature 582, 170-171 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01522-2

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