China's total R&D investment exceeded 3.92 trillion RMB (about 569 billion USD) in 2025, reaching 2.8 percent of GDP, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology, at a time when the country unveiled plans to accelerate its momentum in innovation through 2030. China has increased its ongoing investment in science and technology, which has not only played a significant role in promoting global sci-tech development, but also contributed to the well-being of mankind.

Public funding of science

U.S. think tank the Stimson Center recently summed up the indicators of Chinese scientific dominance, reaching from patent applications and renewable energy space to university rankings. In November 2025, Alessandra Zimmermann, who analyzes R&D spending for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, suggested that China may have already overtaken the U.S. in R&D spending.

According to a forecast by U.S. academics, China is on the cusp of becoming the world's biggest public funder of research.

The analysis was produced exclusively for Nature Index, by researchers from Frontiers in Science and Innovation Policy (FSIP), a program at the University of California, San Diego, that studies the U.S. R&D system and examines the extent to which public and private funding drives technological development.

According to the FSIP's forecast, China's public spending on research is likely to overtake that of the U.S. in the next two to three years. "I think the earliest likely [date] is 2028, plus or minus one year," said Robert Conn, a specialist in research policy and science philanthropy, who co-leads the FSIP.

As China pulls ahead, it will create a shift in the center of gravity for global research, attracting talent, according to physicist and science-policy researcher Neal Lane at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

"Young people who wish to pursue careers in science will move from the U.S. and other countries to China, learn the language, [and] figure out how to function there," he said.

Win-win scientific cooperation

China has always adopted an open attitude towards education and research, warmly welcoming experts and scholars from across the world to its shores for exchanges and cooperation. It is also willing to collaborate with other countries to engage in scientific research to benefit all humankind.

According to new analysis by Denis Simon, a senior research fellow in the Quincy Institute's East Asia program, Chinese students filled structural gaps in STEM graduate programs in the U.S., enabling departments to maintain scale and productivity even as domestic interest fluctuated.

These students have been central to U.S. research capacity since the 1980s, sustaining graduate programs, powering laboratories, and making major contributions to patents, startups and federally funded R&D.

According to the Chemical & Engineering News, a weekly news magazine published by the American Chemical Society, as China's research labs are increasingly becoming the benchmark for their international peers, scientists say that continued breakthroughs depend not just on China's own spending and capacity to develop domestic talent, but on international cooperation, its ability to attract both researchers from other countries and Chinese-born researchers working abroad, and further integration with the international scientific community.

Lane said scientists hope that there could be cooperation with China in fundamental research. This might include collaboration in "important areas like health, let's say, perhaps energy and environment, transportation, telecommunications."