https://www.science.org/content/article/china-now-tops-u-s-r-d-spending-one-key-measure
China now tops the U.S. in R&D spending by one key measure
China reached long expected milestone in 2024.
Still, the OECD analysis suggests China has hit “a significant milestone,” one “in a series of indicators showing China’s increasing strength as a world scientific superpower, if not the world superpower,” says Caroline Wagner, a science policy scholar at Ohio State University. She notes that in 2022, China edged out the U.S. in the number of most cited papers. In 2024, China surpassed the U.S. in the total number of publications indexed in the Web of Science database. The same year China topped the U.S. in the number of papers listed in the Nature Index, which tracks publications in 145 leading science journals.
20 comments:
Pulled ahead.
China is already ahead. Not so much because of their competence or superiority of their system or culture, but our incompetence. This was happening well before the current administration. What was a decline and need for reform and replenished effort has become a surrender. We still lead in AI, but have destroyed the foundation for it. Our National strategy is mindless and unbalanced. China will beat us there too, but beacuse of our stupidity. Its like everything else, we are beating ourselves.
They have only a few top theoretical physicists. Historically there was Lee and Yang, but currently Miranda Cheng is very good, of course, but she is Taiwanese and has a position in Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_Cheng
Xaio-Gang Wen is also a good theorist, again he works in the west https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiao-Gang_Wen
Fortunately, theoretical physicists provide no strategic value. Physics is a solved problem, this is now the century of experimentalists and R&D engineers. Regardless, ChatGPT is well on its way to replacing theorists. It is being used in top publications from schools like Harvard to make physics breakthroughs.
Wasn't it regarded as solved problem in the late 1800's as well, that is before quantum mechanics, relativity, etc?
"It is being used in top publications from schools like Harvard to make physics breakthroughs."
No, it's not. The entire 6.13 AM post is bonkers garbage. In fact the whole thread is nothing but noise. I would expect this idiotic statements on reddit but not this blog.
Who you are guys?
Some other poster said
"They have only a few top theoretical physicists."
They have a whole lot more than a few. Do you have any knowledge of physics whatsoever or who is in the field?
Also
"Physics is a solved problem"
Uh, what? That makes no sense. It is not even a defined statement.
"Regardless, ChatGPT is well on its way to replacing theorists."
This might sound good on popular science youtube channel spouting out blather but this is certainly not the case. Hint: that junk on reddit, and youtube is just that "junk".
Damm this went south fast.
OK, who are their top people, and are they really at the top? Can you list two or three people? And how would you claim to know whether AI could replace theorists at some point in the future?
I think you must be promoting some sort of communist agenda. Isn't it the case that China prosecuted intellectuals in the cultural revolution, and they still haven't recovered from that? Please examine this list of Nobel prizes by country and the list of Chinese nobel laureates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_Nobel_laureates
"OK, who are their top people, and are they really at the top? Can you list two or three people? And how would you claim to know whether AI could replace theorists at some point in the future?
4/14/2026 6:57 AM"
There are hundreds of top people. Try google scholar first. If you make the effect and you get get 10 people in 20 seconds. How about this as a deal just name 2 and I will give 98 more. I think this will be more powerful for you if you learn to first put some effort in before, making crazy claims. This way you apply this method your claims thoughts before you dump them on some blogs.
"And how would you claim to know whether AI could replace theorists at some point in the future?"
I suppose AI could replace theorists in the future. I think a more likely outcome and one we are seeing is that AI will lead to more theorists and an enhancement of methods used by theorists. This effect is already well known in the community.
Look I can understand the random cashier at Wallmart making these kinds of comments but I expect better form a LLNL blog. However if you by chance a Wallmart cashier and for some reason read this blog, ok.
"I think you must be promoting some sort of communist agenda. Isn't it the case that China prosecuted intellectuals in the cultural revolution, and they still haven't recovered from that? Please examine this list of Nobel prizes by country and the list of Chinese nobel laureates"
How did this blog turn into anti-intellectual hellscape on par with reddit? Did reddit kick some people off that need to find a new home? This thread is just off.
The problem is once these blogs get infected with kind of stuff it just dies. You cannot argue with a reddit person, you cannot reason with them, they are immune to logic and just keep saying crazier and crazier stuff. This post is classic example of that. Someone sends a link with a study showing that by well defined measures China is pulling ahead of the US in terms of science. Not a very controversial take. This turns into, there are no good Chinese scientists and AI is going to take over and you do not believe this you a communist. There is no point in responding because what happens next is they start talking about UFOs, the antichrist, and inter-dimensional beings. If you try to argue against that then you part of the government plot and so. It always ends this way.
The blog has been around 19 years. What do you suggest to improve it?
OK, I think you are missing the point, this is not about science in general or the volume of publications -- it was a specific discussion about elite theoretical physics, and which countries have the very top people. Also it isn't really a critique of communism in general, the Cultural Revolution was specific to China, and it did set them back. The details are well documented.
The blog has been around 19 years. What do you suggest to improve it?
4/15/2026 1:42 PM
I think you already filter out the really bad stuff. I have never seen anything that bad so I assume you must not let it get posted.
"it was a specific discussion about elite theoretical physics, and which countries have the very top people"
The problem with that is you end up mentioning people like Ed Witten or Steven Weinberg who are either rather old or dead, and indeed for that generation the USA was way ahead. These are the names people know on the internet.
Right now the under 40 crowd is not really that well known on the public mainstream but be assured China is at least on par with that or even getting
better. It is not promoting communism, it is simply pointing out that we may resting on the greatness of the past and very rapidly we will be behind China.
Just because you cannot name the names does not mean they are not out there and anyone in the game sees what is happening.
Also comparing countries by who won past Nobels is not the proper measure, it is who is going to win the future ones. Remember even the recent Nobel AI prize these includes for Hinton who is 78 and Hopfield who is 92.
People are missing the point. China has an awful, terrible system that is deeply oppressive. Yet they are pulling ahead of the USA in science. It is a sign that we are beating ourselves. Our internal conflict. China isn't winning as much as the USA is losing.
Nobel prizes are backwards looking. They are a sign of the past of science. We used to be on top. The question is whether the future will be the same.
We are charting a path where China or someplace else will lead the world. Science in the USA has been in decline since the end of the Cold War. The reasons are legion. Our Labs are all declining. DoD (DoW) labs are a joke. NASA science has been evicerated. Universities are dropping. Industrial research is gone because it doesn't help the quarterly balance sheet. Applied science we benefit from today is the research from decades ago. Look at the inability for the federal government research to stand shoulder to shoulder with the AI companies. We can't. THis is a crisis and we have done it to ourselves.
You theoretical physicists who think AI won't displace you will be proven wrong by history. ChatGPT is almost there today, and it's entirely there today in programming. In 5 years there is no question that it will be doing math and theory at the level of any LANL or LLNL physicist. Maybe not nobel prize, but even that isn't out of the realm of possibility. A year ago, people at LANL were telling me I was an idiot for using AI to help me code and that it was all "slop", now they all admit the value and use it too.
The only thing safe is experimental work, and even that might get displaced in the long term with humanoid robotics... But we are talking 15 or 20 years probably.
Don't say I didn't warn you!
"In 5 years there is no question that it will be doing math and theory at the level of any LANL or LLNL physicist. Maybe not nobel prize, but even that isn't out of the realm of possibility. A year ago, people at LANL were telling me I was an idiot for using AI to help me code and that it was all "slop", now they all admit the value and use it too."
I think you have exactly opposite in that AI will not be "doing physics and math" on its own and replacing people but will be assisting people using it. I say it will not replace physics and math people but allow even more people to do it and faster. Every time there was a tech innovation even more people could do science and could do it better or it allowed entirely new kinds of problems to be studied that could not be studied before making the demand for science and tech people even higher. Why would AI be any different? I think in 15 years we will need or want even more people doing science to take advantage of AI and the new fields it opens up.
It is like saying "with the invention of the computer we will not need scientists!"
It is a silly statement.
Also this whole "AI will replace scientists" is something you hear in the popular press and on reddit but it is not something you hear from scientist themselves. Instead you hear complaints that it is not advancing enough or that it only seems to work on limited number of problems, or they wish it could code better. To be honest if you asked me 15 years ago where we should be with AI and in science we are pretty much at the point or a bit less. Even at LANL AI has been around for some time, and the advances have even pretty study. Anybody who has been in the game has seen this, there was no "the world changed in 2022". Again that is some facebook news feed stuff, not something people in the field adhere to. Think about it ChatGTP came in 2022 as a mass product for billions to use, did ever occur to anyone the many number of years of the science that was behind it?
"A year ago, people at LANL were telling me I was an idiot for using AI to help me code and that it was all "slop", now they all admit the value and use it too."
Alex I will take "things that never happened " for 200.
I doubt you "coding" for LANL or any other NNSA lab. Your whole post is off and sounds more like something from a business office not any kind of research or engineering institute.
I don't agree because as an experimentalist, I don't need to bring a theorist on the project anymore. The money flows to the experiments and in the past I would bring on somebody from T division, but now I don't need to. ChatGPT is good enough to help the experimentalist validate their idea and flesh out the math at almost no cost.
Yes, the experimentalist needs to understand physics and have their own ideas to guide the model, but most have that.
The right analogy to have in your head is graphic artists. I can't draw well, but I understand the message that needs to be conveyed and I know good graphics when I see it. Instead of hiring an artist, I can guide AI to produce the art for me. It costs almost nothing which means I can spend the savings on other things to be more productive.
Plus, most lab theorists frankly just aren't very good at idea generation. They tend to come up with impractical and inefficient ideas that have maybe 50% maximum theoretical benefit, -50% in practice, or are so inefficient as to be useless. The low hanging fruit was picked a long time ago and we aren't seeing radically new ideas in physics anymore.
Just like programmers, theorist's days are numbered unless they are genuinely good at the idea, concept and innovation process. ChatGPT can do the physics.
"I don't agree because as an experimentalist, I don't need to bring a theorist on the project anymore. The money flows to the experiments and in the past I would bring on somebody from T division, but now I don't need to"
??
Is this some kind troll or a joke? I have no idea what to say, you are either making this up or have not set foot in a science lab in many many....may years.
Off the wall thread fore sure, but keep the crazy going. Let us just embrace this.
After all the money is flowing only to experiment, I guess that whole Genesis project is just made up stuff for theory and computing.
"ChatGPT can do the physics."
Yes this must explain why we are going to fund hundreds of millions for "theorist to work on AI". Makes total sense.
You know, communism is pretty popular at some of our top universities. Perhaps, once chatbots replace the need for universities to teach people, we could have our own cultural revolution here. We actually have an orange man in charge already, evidently, who has been called by some a "right-wing marxist" since he places economics foremost in his thinking. It will help lower the cost of fruit and vegetables, I would assume, and at the same time we can roll out our "universal basic income" system. By using the wily Chinese tactics against them, we can regain leadership and economic dominance, our tech oligarchs will create an ideal society!!!
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