China could be the world’s biggest public funder of science within two years
China is on the cusp of becoming the world’s biggest public funder of research, according to a forecast by US academics, as stalled growth in government investment in the United States coincides with consistent rises in spending by the Chinese authorities.
The analysis — produced exclusively for Nature Index — was the work of researchers from Frontiers in Science and Innovation Policy (FSIP), a programme at the University of California, San Diego, that studies the US research and development (R&D) system and examines the extent to which public and private funding boost technological development.
Government spending on R&D in China increased by 90% to US$133 billion in the decade leading up to 2023, according to the most recent purchasing-power-adjusted data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). By contrast, in the United States, spending rose by just 12%, to $155 billion.
According to the FSIP’s forecast, China’s public spending on research is likely to overtake that of the United States in the next two to three years. [Continue reading…]