Who Should Be Your Institution’s Priority Academic Partner— the US or China?
“The times they are a-changin',” sang once a famed troubadour. One such seismic change is happening right now to his own nation: the US is ceding its status as a world leader in research and development to China. Having lost first place by total paper output (per Scopus) five years ago, in 2023 it has suffered a more stinging blow: China has surpassed it by count of papers in the World’s premier journals. And, according to an analysis by Ivan Sterligov from E-Quadrat Science & Education, in 2024 it was surpassed by the count of papers at top AI conferences.
Why this shift matters
This development has many implications, but here we focus on the changing global dominance of the US and China as research partners for other countries. Such a dynamic is important for anyone involved in internationalisation, including university and government leaders worldwide. This is especially relevant given the interplay of two facts:
the share of international papers is growing across the board as research becomes more complex and open
the broader geopolitical changes are leading to a more divided and competing world
Methodology: Our global collaboration metric
We collected yearly Scopus data for each of the world's countries and territories (n = 239) from 2000 to 2024. Our metric is simple: it shows the difference between the percentage of a country's research papers co-authored with the US and those co-authored with China.
A score of +100 means that all of a country’s internationally co-authored papers include authors from the US and none from China
A score of –100 means the exact opposite — all collaborations are with China, and none with the US
Values closer to zero indicate a more balanced relationship between the two
Disciplinary focus: Two key academic domains
To highlight differences in global academic dominance and collaboration across various disciplines, we focus on two broad areas:
Chemistry and Materials Science – the backbone of technology and engineering
Social Sciences and Humanities – reflecting cultural and ideological preferences and influence
Countries with fewer than 50 papers per year per area are omitted.
Chemistry and Materials Science
China is now the world’s leading partner in this area. The countries that align most closely with China are Mongolia, Australia and Belarus, albeit for different reasons. Central Asia, including Pakistan, is another important region.
Long-standing US partners such as the UK, Canada, and oil-rich Arab nations now have more papers with China. If the trend continues, France and Germany will follow in 1–2 years; for the southern EU, it could take a little longer. India’s collaboration with both superpowers is low, but China’s role has gradually increased despite political tensions. Russia’s gravitation towards China has rapidly accelerated since 2022. The US is essentially only left with Latin America and some countries that are less research-intensive, such as Uganda.
Lastly, China is much more important for the US than the US is for China.
Evolving patterns
On the other hand, dynamic data for the leading producers of Chemistry&Materials Science papers shows that the pivoting towards China has stalled after 2020 for some major countries, including India, that now occupies the third place globally by paper volume in this area. Canada is reducing its collaboration with China amidst political tensions. For newcomers like Saudi Arabia, the trend is opposite, but it is clear that the overall situation is much more complex than “China grows, USA recedes”, and could unfold in a variety of ways.
Figure 1. The balance of papers with China and US for countries exceeding 10k Scopus papers per year in Chemistry&Materials Science for 2022 and 2024. Australia was omitted as an outlier. Line thickness corresponds to paper count.
Collaboration intensity and balance
A static ranking of nations by the volume of Chemistry\Materials Science papers in 2024 allows us to highlight the differences not only in paper volume and balance, but also in collaboration intensity. For example, Turkey and Netherlands have similar US-China balance, but Netherlands has thrice higher share of papers with both of them.
Figure 2. The balance of papers with China and US for countries exceeding 5k Scopus papers per year in Chemistry&Materials Science for 2024, with the total count of such papers and shares of papers with China and the US.
Social Sciences & Humanities
USA totals in 2000: 30k
USA totals in 2024: 85k
China totals in 2000: 0.4k
China totals in 2024: 48k
It's a different picture, allowing for many interpretations, which we will refrain from offering. We just note that the hegemony of English (incl. what’s indexed in Scopus) is much more controversial in SSH. As for countries and regions with more ties to China in SSH per our metric, it is important to note Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Malaysia and Mongolia. The rest, including Iran, still have more papers with the US, at least when measured by Scopus.
Navigating a dual-power research world
In conclusion, we need to navigate a world in which China dominates chemistry and many other STEM areas, while the US remains the leader in social sciences and humanities. Another meaning of 'chemistry' is the strong, positive and often inexplicable attraction between two people, characterised by feelings of excitement, comfort and mutual understanding. It would be great if researchers and their nations could experience this kind of connection more often. In the meantime, we are always happy to provide our analytics to inform pragmatic, evidence-based approaches to international research management and international collaboration.
For more information about this research please do not hesitate to contact us directly: hq@e-kvadrat.com