The top ten cities for scientific research in the world have been completely divided between China and the United States, with Tokyo and London not even making the list!
Recently, the "Nature Index" under the journal Nature released a ranking of global cities based on their research output. The results are surprising yet expected: the top ten cities with the strongest research capabilities are all concentrated in the United States and China—China takes six spots, and the United States takes four. More notably, the top two spots are both occupied by Chinese cities.
This ranking is based on the number of papers published in 82 high-quality natural science journals in 2023, counting the research contributions from institutions in each city. In other words, it speaks with actual numbers and quality of papers, rather than including vague indicators such as reputation, student-teacher ratio, or internationalization, like some university rankings do.
Cities that were long regarded as major centers for scientific research, such as Tokyo, London, Paris, Zurich, and Munich, did not make the list at all this time. Although the United States still maintains strong overall research strength, its research resources are highly concentrated in several innovation corridors: the Boston-New York-Baltimore "academic triangle" on the East Coast, and the San Francisco Bay Area (including Stanford, Berkeley, and Silicon Valley) on the West Coast.
These regions attract the country's top talent and capital, but they also make it difficult for other cities to break through. In contrast, China's research layout emphasizes "multiple points blooming," by building national laboratories, large scientific facilities, and regional innovation centers, bringing research capabilities down to secondary cities.
Looking at why Tokyo and London fell behind, Japan has seen stagnant growth in research funding in recent years, with reduced support for basic research, and a declining proportion of young researchers due to an aging population, leading to slower growth in overall output. Although the UK has top universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, post-Brexit restrictions on research collaboration, loss of EU research funding, and long-term government R&D investment below the OECD average have made London struggle to compete with top cities in China and the US in terms of actual output.
This new pattern has far-reaching implications. On one hand, the global center of gravity for scientific research is shifting from a Western-dominated single pole to a Sino-US dual pole, and the "friendship circle" of international scientific and technological cooperation is also being restructured. On the other hand, the rise of research cities directly drives local industrial upgrading—for example, Hefei's quantum computing, Wuhan's chip manufacturing, and Boston's biopharmaceuticals have already formed a closed-loop ecosystem of "research-industry-capital."
Original article: toutiao.com/article/1852537002707081/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author alone.