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According to an index brought out by the prestigious scientific journal Nature, a Chinese regional university, the Sichuan University (SCU) in Chengdu, has recently overtaken Stanford University, MIT, Oxford and the University of Tokyo to emerge as the 11th top university in terms of science research output. The index assesses institutions by their contributions to articles in a slate of top-tier scientific journals. Nature’s Index measures five areas—biological sciences, chemistry, Earth and environmental sciences, health sciences, and physical sciences.
While Harvard retains the top spot, the other nine universities on the list, followed by SCU, are all in China. While China has recently garnered global headlines because of the AI company DeepSeek, it has already gathered considerable momentum in the last decade by its efforts to become a science and technology power.
The index assesses institutions by their contributions to articles in a slate of top-tier scientific journals.
In this process, universities like SCU have taken special measures to enhance research excellence. This included attracting high-level researchers, increased funding, promoting industry-university partnership and boosting international academic exchanges and collaborations. A report said that the university had invited more than 5,000 outstanding scholars from dozens of countries and regions and held promotional events in countries like Singapore, Germany, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, and South Korea. Since 2008, China has run what is called a “Thousand Talents Programme” which seeks to attract overseas Chinese and non-Chinese scientists with substantial financial incentives to work in China.
In the past month, whether by design or by coincidence, we have been inundated by news of Chinese technological achievements. There can be little doubt that the revelation of the two reportedly sixth-generation fighters at the end of last month was intended to make an impact. The fighters were photographed at a low altitude, and the pictures were disseminated, possibly to influence opinion in the US. Likewise, the release of the DeepSeek R1 chatbot application, which became the most downloaded free app in Apple’s App Store shortly after its launch, was done for effect, though it is unlikely that the DeepSeek company could have anticipated the reaction to its chatbot launch.
In the last three years, the US has worked to limit China’s access to cutting-edge computer chips as well as specialised equipment to manufacture them. It aimed to slow China’s progress in developing what are called large language models. DeepSeek has said that its model was trained on Nvidia H800 chips, the AI chip developed by Nvidia specifically for the Chinese market following restrictions on its high-end ones.
There can be little doubt that the revelation of the two reportedly sixth-generation fighters at the end of last month was intended to make an impact.
The H800 was also banned in 2024, but the Chinese company had stockpiled thousands of chips by the time the restrictions kicked in. DeepSeek has claimed that its models have been developed at a fraction of the cost of high-priced chips being used for similar technology by Western companies. This claim has been supported by the fact that it shared a scientific paper detailing how it has built its model, and this can be an incentive to trigger a low-cost approach that will hurt US companies.
In recent months, the US has tightened its restrictions further and has now enhanced US controls over AI chips. It has divided countries into three tiers—the first consisting of the US and its 18 allies and partners, including Australia, Japan, Canada, South Korea and the United Kingdom. The second tier introduces caps on the number of chips exported to each country and requires licensing and mandatory end-user certification. China and India are in this grouping. The third tier is of countries like North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and Russia, which will have no access to technology.
From the very outset, China has sought to “reinnovate” or redevelop key technologies at home after acquiring them through a variety of means—buying, stealing, and forcing foreign companies to part with them. An early example was High-Speed Rail (HSR) technology.
After failing to develop HSR indigenously, between 2002-2008, China entered cooperative agreements with four major international manufacturers—Kawasaki, Bombardier, Alstom, and Siemens. The companies were required to share their technology with Chinese partners.
By 2009, this approach allowed China to gain critical know-how in various aspects of HSR technology, including design, manufacturing processes and operational systems. Parallel to this, the Chinese created a comprehensive domestic supply chain involving 500 companies and 25 universities and created a single outfit, China Railway Rolling Stock Company (CRRC), to manage the unrolling of the technology. Today, three-fifths of the world’s total HSR system is Chinese.
Though China has always had a policy to promote the indigenisation of technology, in 2015 or so, it introduced a policy of accelerating this process through what is called the “Made in China” programme to emphasise green and innovative technology. This has been remarkably successful, and Chinese firms have reached the top-most levels in several industries. Last October, a Bloomberg special report noted that China has achieved a global leadership position in five key technologies—UAVs, solar panels, graphene, high-speed rail, and electrical vehicles and batteries. At the same time, it had achieved a “competitive” status in technologies like computer chips, AI, robots, machine tools, large tractors, drugs, and LNG carriers.
US restrictions are also having the paradoxical impact of encouraging the Chinese to enhance their R&D efforts and innovation, and this could be a longer-term danger for the US.
Some technological frontiers don’t figure in the list. One of these is, as The Economist points out, quantum technology. “China is the undisputed leader in quantum communications”, says the publication, while the US has a wide lead in quantum computing, while the two are “neck and neck” in quantum sensing.
Another area is biotechnology, which includes advances in health technologies, agricultural biotech, and bio-manufacturing. The US is ahead in fundamental research, while China is focusing on applied research to develop technologies that can be used.
Other areas are advanced materials, blockchain, internet of things, cybersecurity, additive manufacturing, clean energy technology, space technology and 5G and telecom.
The fact that DeepSeek used a less capable chip for its achievement suggests that it could have done better had it had access to high-end chips. In that sense, the US effort to slow down Chinese technological growth makes sense. However, US restrictions are also having the paradoxical impact of encouraging the Chinese to enhance their R&D efforts and innovation, and this could be a longer-term danger for the US.
The Chinese have now stopped boasting about their “Made in China” programme or the “Thousand Talents Programme” so as not to attract global attention. Their overall strategy is three-pronged: replicating technologies that are restricted by the West, emphasising a younger and more productive cohort of their scientists and researchers, and third, focusing on entirely new technologies where the West does not have the kind of lead that it had, say in the case of the internal combustion engine—photonic computing, brain-computer interfaces, nuclear fusion, and telemedicine.
Manoj Joshi is a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.
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