Bigger Than You Thought: China's Contribution to Scientific Publications and Its Impact on the Global Economy

• Author: Richard B. Freeman,Qingnan Xie
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12265
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Date: 01 January 2019

China & World Economy / 1–27, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2019

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©2019 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

*Qingnan Xie, PhD Candidate, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, China; Labor and Worklife Program,

Harvard Law School, USA. Email: 2362626753@qq.com; Richard B. Freeman, Professor, Department of Economics,

Harvard University, and National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), USA. Email: freeman@nber.org. The

authors thank participants in the following seminars and conferences for comments on earlier drafts: China Economy

Seminar, Harvard University (27 April 2017); Chinese Socio-economic Development Symposium, Shanghai Academy

of Social Sciences (21–22 June 2018); and the Conference on New Aspects of Statistics, Financial Econometrics, and

Data Science, Stevanovich Center, the University of Chicago (10–12 May 2018). Qingnan Xie’s Research Fellowship

at the Labor and Worklife Program (2016–2018) was funded by nancial support from the China Scholarship Council.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reect the views of the NBER.

Bigger Than You Thought: China’s Contribution to

Scientic Publications and Its Impact

on the Global Economy

Qingnan Xie, Richard B. Freeman*

Abstract

China’s advance to the forefront of scientic research is one of the 21st century’s most

surprising developments, with implications for a world where knowledge is arguably

“the one ring that rules them all.” This paper provides new estimates of China’s

contribution to global science that far exceed estimates based on the proportion of

papers with Chinese addresses in databases of international journals. Address-based

measures ignore articles written by Chinese researchers with non-Chinese addresses and

articles in Chinese language journals not indexed in those databases. Taking account of

these contributions, we attribute 36 percent of 2016 global scientic articles to China.

Taking account of increased citations to Chinese-addressed articles relative to the

global average as well, we attribute 37 percent of global citations to scientic articles

published in 2013 to China. With shares of articles and citations more than twice its

share of global population or GDP, China has achieved a comparative advantage in

knowledge that has implications for the division of labor and trade among countries and

for the direction of research and of technological and economic development worldwide.

Key words: China National Knowledge Infrastructure, China scientic output, citation,

comparative advantage, innovation, knowledge economy

JEL codes: J21, J44, O3, P5

I. Introduction

China’s extraordinary economic growth since the Cultural Revolution has closely

Qingnan Xie, Richard B. Freeman / 1–27, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2019

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©2019 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

followed the precepts of modern economics. China shifted its economy toward markets,

joined the global economy, expanded higher education and industrialized via low wage

manufacturing. However, the country went beyond the standard path of development

in one important way. It invested heavily in science and engineering1 to jump from

bit player to major contributor in global scientic activities. In the modern knowledge

economy where scientific knowledge is arguably “the one ring that rules them all,”2

China’s new comparative advantage in the production of scientific and engineering

knowledge will make it a major driver of the division of labor and trade among countries

and of the direction of research and of technological and economic development

worldwide.

This paper estimates China’s contribution to global science based on the quantity

and quality of Chinese articles in physical sciences, engineering and mathematics3

journals relative to the total number of articles in those journals. The major nding is

that, when properly measured to take account of articles authored by Chinese researchers

at non-Chinese addresses as well as of China-addressed articles in the Scopus

database, and of articles in Chinese language journals not in the Scopus database,

Chinese contributions account for 36 percent of global scientific publications. This

is approximately twice the standard address-based measure of papers in international

scientic journals and a comparable share of global scientic citations.

The paper proceeds in four parts. Section II provides our estimates of China’s share

of articles in scientic journals, with the number of Chinese language articles outside

the Scopus database adjusted to be comparable to Scopus articles. Section III documents

a large increase in citations to papers with all-Chinese addresses, and estimates China’s

share of global citations. Section IV examines the impact of China’s new comparative

advantage in science on its industrial structure and share of global production and trade

in high-tech industries and economic innovation.

1China had the largest number of science and engineering (S&E) bachelor and master degree graduates in the

world, and the largest number of S&E PhDs granted to citizens from domestic universities and universities

in other countries, particularly in the US. In 2016, over 5000 Chinese obtained S&E PhD degrees in the

US (National Science Board, 2018, Table 26). China’s research and development (R&D) expenditure in

purchasing power parity units surpassed EU spending in 2015 and is expected to surpass US spending by

2020 (National Science Board, 2018, Tables 4 and 5), supporting the world’s largest number of researchers.

Available from: https://data.oecd.org/rd/researchers.htm (cited 8 August 2018).

2See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Ring (cited 10 December 2018).

3We cover journal articles in those elds, excluding conference proceedings, books and book chapters because

of their less frequent use of peer review. We exclude social sciences, economics and business as these often

focus on issues specic to a country rather than basic science.