research paper on china

China now publishes more high-quality science than any other nation – should the US be worried?

Milton & Roslyn Wolf Chair in International Affairs, The Ohio State University

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Caroline Wagner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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By at least one measure, China now leads the world in producing high-quality science . My research shows that Chinese scholars now publish a larger fraction of the top 1% most cited scientific papers globally than scientists from any other country.

I am a policy expert and analyst who studies how governmental investment in science, technology and innovation improves social welfare. While a country’s scientific prowess is somewhat difficult to quantify, I’d argue that the amount of money spent on scientific research, the number of scholarly papers published and the quality of those papers are good stand-in measures.

China is not the only nation to drastically improve its science capacity in recent years, but China’s rise has been particularly dramatic. This has left U.S. policy experts and government officials worried about how China’s scientific supremacy will shift the global balance of power . China’s recent ascendancy results from years of governmental policy aiming to be tops in science and technology. The country has taken explicit steps to get where it is today, and the U.S. now has a choice to make about how to respond to a scientifically competitive China.

Growth across decades

In 1977, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping introduced the Four Modernizations , one of which was strengthening China’s science sector and technological progress. As recently as 2000, the U.S. produced many times the number of scientific papers as China annually. However, over the past three decades or so, China has invested funds to grow domestic research capabilities, to send students and researchers abroad to study, and to encourage Chinese businesses to shift to manufacturing high-tech products.

Since 2000, China has sent an estimated 5.2 million students and scholars to study abroad . The majority of them studied science or engineering. Many of these students remained where they studied, but an increasing number return to China to work in well-resourced laboratories and high-tech companies.

Today, China is second only to the U.S. in how much it spends on science and technology . Chinese universities now produce the largest number of engineering Ph.D.s in the world, and the quality of Chinese universities has dramatically improved in recent years .

Producing more and better science

Thanks to all this investment and a growing, capable workforce, China’s scientific output – as measured by the number of total published papers – has increased steadily over the years. In 2017, Chinese scholars published more scientific papers than U.S. researchers for the first time.

Quantity does not necessarily mean quality though. For many years, researchers in the West wrote off Chinese research as low quality and often as simply imitating research from the U.S. and Europe . During the 2000s and 2010s, much of the work coming from China did not receive significant attention from the global scientific community.

But as China has continued to invest in science, I began to wonder whether the explosion in the quantity of research was accompanied by improving quality.

To quantify China’s scientific strength, my colleagues and I looked at citations. A citation is when an academic paper is referenced – or cited – by another paper. We considered that the more times a paper has been cited, the higher quality and more influential the work. Given that logic, the top 1% most cited papers should represent the upper echelon of high-quality science.

My colleagues and I counted how many papers published by a country were in the top 1% of science as measured by the number of citations in various disciplines. Going year by year from 2015 to 2019, we then compared different countries. We were surprised to find that in 2019, Chinese authors published a greater percentage of the most influential papers , with China claiming 8,422 articles in the top category, while the U.S had 7,959 and the European Union had 6,074. In just one recent example, we found that in 2022, Chinese researchers published three times as many papers on artificial intelligence as U.S. researchers; in the top 1% most cited AI research, Chinese papers outnumbered U.S. papers by a 2-to-1 ratio. Similar patterns can be seen with China leading in the top 1% most cited papers in nanoscience, chemistry and transportation.

Our research also found that Chinese research was surprisingly novel and creative – and not simply copying western researchers. To measure this, we looked at the mix of disciplines referenced in scientific papers. The more diverse and varied the referenced research was in a single paper, the more interdisciplinary and novel we considered the work. We found Chinese research to be as innovative as other top performing countries.

Taken together, these measures suggest that China is now no longer an imitator nor producer of only low-quality science. China is now a scientific power on par with the U.S. and Europe, both in quantity and in quality.

Fear or collaboration?

Scientific capability is intricately tied to both military and economic power. Because of this relationship, many in the U.S. – from politicians to policy experts – have expressed concern that China’s scientific rise is a threat to the U.S., and the government has taken steps to slow China’s growth. The recent Chips and Science Act of 2022 explicitly limits cooperation with China in some areas of research and manufacturing. In October 2022, the Biden administration put restrictions in place to limit China’s access to key technologies with military applications .

A number of scholars, including me, see these fears and policy responses as rooted in a nationalistic view that doesn’t wholly map onto the global endeavor of science.

Academic research in the modern world is in large part driven by the exchange of ideas and information. The results are published in publicly available journals that anyone can read. Science is also becoming ever more international and collaborative , with researchers around the world depending on each other to push their fields forward. Recent collaborative research on cancer , COVID-19 and agriculture are just a few of many examples. My own work has also shown that when researchers from China and the U.S. collaborate, they produce higher quality science than either one alone.

China has joined the ranks of top scientific and technological nations, and some of the concerns over shifts of power are reasonable in my view. But the U.S. can also benefit from China’s scientific rise. With many global issues facing the planet – like climate change , to name just one – there may be wisdom in looking at this new situation as not only a threat, but also an opportunity.

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• Science policy
• Globalization
• Science and technology
• Chinese science
• CHIPS and Science Act

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China’s Research Evaluation Reform: What are the Consequences for Global Science?

• Published: 30 April 2022
• Volume 60 , pages 329–347, ( 2022 )

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• Fei Shu 1 , 2 ,
• Sichen Liu 1 &
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In the 1990s, China created a research evaluation system based on publications indexed in the Science Citation Index (SCI) and on the Journal Impact Factor. Such system helped the country become the largest contributor to the scientific literature and increased the position of Chinese universities in international rankings. Although the system had been criticized by many because of its adverse effects, the policy reform for research evaluation crawled until the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic, which accidently accelerates the process of policy reform. This paper highlights the background and principles of this reform, provides evidence of its effects, and discusses the implications for global science.

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The Evolution of Research Evaluation in China

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Introduction

In parallel with the exponential growth of its economy, China’s emergence in science and technology has had a far-reaching impact on global science. In 2017, China has surpassed the US and became the largest source country in terms of the number of scholarly papers (National Science Board 2018 ), and its R&D expenditures are almost on par with those of the US (543 vs. 582 billion USD in 2018) (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2018 ). Such growth in international research output can be associated with the implementation of China’s national strategy of science and education, in which science, technology and education are given priority in the national development plan (National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China 2007 ). The key elements of the national strategy include the increasing investment in R&D and promotion of internationalisation of research (Marginson 2021 ). It is also partly attributed to the creation of a SCI-based research evaluation system, favoring publications indexed by the Science Citation Index (SCI). Since the 1990s, the number of such international publications as well as other related bibliometric indicators (e.g. Journal Impact Factors (JIF), Essential Science Indicators (ESI), etc.) have been overweighed in research evaluation, tenure assessment, funding application as well as performance salaries in China (Quan et al. 2017 ; Shu et al. 2020a ) to develop China’s leadership in global science.

In China, SCI-based indicators are applied to research evaluations at both individual and institutional levels. However, they have been criticized for their negative effects on academic integrity (Quan et al. 2017 ; Tang 2019 ) and national knowledge dissemination (Chu et al. 2015 ; Duan et al. 2015 ; W. Li et al. 2015 ; C.-e. Liu 2018 ; Yanyang Liu et al. 2003 ; X. Wang 2012 ; Jiping Zhang 2019 ; Zhu 2020 ; Zou and Zhang 2017 ) for several years. A policy reform against indicator-based research evaluation has also been called for a long time (L. Zhang and Sivertsen 2020 ). As early as 2011, Ministry of Education (MoE) issued a document regarding the change of research evaluation in social sciences and humanities (Ministry of Education of China 2011 ). The policy reform even gained the attention from China’s leaders; in 2016, China’s Chairman Xi ( 2016 ) asked Chinese scientists to “publish papers on homeland”. As a response in 2018, MoE, Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MoST), Ministry of Human Resource and Social Security (MoHRSS), Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) issued a joint document asking universities and research institutes not to abusively use indicators relative to papers, titles, ranks, degrees and awards (Ministry of Education of China 2018 ). However, significant changes were not observed in China’s research evaluation system, and SCI-based indicators have still been abundantly used.

Perhaps unexpectedly, a real change to the SCI-based evaluation system was triggered by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Chinese researchers prioritized publication of findings on the new coronavirus in international journals (Huang et al. 2020 ; Q. Li et al. 2020 ) rather than national journals, which would have helped disseminating them to those who were fighting the pandemic (Ministry of Science and Technology of China 2020a ). The publication of these two articles aroused public anger and was accused of delaying the control of the pandemic (An 2020 ; Du 2020 ; Qin 2020 ). In response to this (H. Li 2020 ; Yan Liu 2020 ), MoST and MoE issued two official documents in February 2020 that aim to reshape scholarly communication and research evaluation in China (Ministry of Education of China and Ministry of Science and Technology of China 2020a , b ; Ministry of Science and Technology of China 2020b ), which attempt to overcome the abusive use of SCI-based indicators on research evaluation (Quan et al. 2017 ; Shu et al. 2020a ) and build a new scientific research evaluation system.

As the largest contributor, China publishes almost one fourth of scientific literature and one fifth of international collaboration (ISTIC 2020 ). The possible impact of China’s research evaluation reform on global science has been of concern (Mallapaty 2020 ). In this study, we highlight the principles of policy reform as well as their background, and analyze the possible implications for global science.

Policy Reform

The two documents issued by MoE and MoST contain seven major measures, which can be divided into three aspects of scholarly communication and research evaluation as shown in Table 1 .

Farewell to the SCI

SCI-based indicators were introduced in the 1990s when the country initiated its ambious plan Footnote 1 to embrace the global science. Nanjing University was the first university to use SCI papers for research evaluation, and topped China’s university rankings afterwards. SCI-based indicators then spread across the country, as research administrators regarded them as a solution to increase China’s share of international publications (Qiu and Ji 2003 ). Many Chinese scholars also believed that SCI-based indicators were fairer than peer review, which was considered to be biased by personal relationship and seniority in China (Shi and Rao 2010 ).

In order to promote university research, three national programs (i.e., Project 211, Project 985, and Double First Class) have been initiated one by one since the 1990s. These programs provide substantial financial support to a small group of selected universities, and one key admission requirement is the number of international publications (Shu et al. 2020b ). To encourage scholars to publish internationally and improve their rankings, Chinese universities apply the SCI-based indicators that have, since then, been considered as the gold standard in China’s research evaluation. SCI papers became mandatory requirements for doctoral degrees, faculty hiring and promotion, funding applications, and university rankings. Publishing in a subset of SCI-indexed elite journals leads to major research funding, as well as additional rewards, such as promotion from assistant to full professor, appointment as Chair or Dean, and even to university president (Shu et al. 2020a ). Cash-per-publication policies have also been widespread, leading to additional revenues of up to 1 million CNY per paper (150,000USD) (Quan et al. 2017 ).

The strong pressures to publish in SCI journals may lead to the effect of goal displacement (Frey et al. 2013 ; Osterloh and Frey 2014 ) which the Chinese government became acutely aware of at the outbreak of the pandemic. The purpose of research for some Chinese institutions and scholars is not to advance knowledge, but rather to improve their rankings and indicators, even at the cost of research integrity (Tang 2019 ). Indeed, over the last two decaces, along with the growing number of international publications from China, cases of academic misconduct (plagiarism, academic dishonesty, ghostwritten papers, fake peer review, etc.) have also increased (Jia 2017 ; Hvistendahl 2013 ). The scale of adacemic misconduct cases evolved from individual cases to “paper mills” (Chawla 2020 ; Else and Van Noorden 2021 ). In this context, it is not surprising that the number of China’s retracted papers has been increasing in the past two decades, and China has the largest number of retracted papers, contributing to 24% of all retracted papers (490/2,061) in 2020, followed by the US (122) and Iran (79) as reported by Web of Science (Figure 1 ). Figure 1 also shows that the share of China’s retractions to all retractions across the world has been higher than the share of China’s publications to all publications worldwide since 2004.

Number and share of China’s publications and retractions indexed by the Web of Science (2000–2020)

Priority to National Journals

SCI-based evaluation policies have created incentives for Chinese scholars to publish their research in international journals rather than in national journals (Zou and Zhang 2017 ; C.-e. Liu 2018 ). In China, however, international journals are less accessible than national Chinese journals due to the paywalls and language (Schiermeier 2018 ). As a result, dissemination of findings to the international scientific community comes at the expense of the national Chinese community (Larivière et al. 2020 ), and this was clearly observed at the outbreak of the pandemic, when Chinese scholars disseminated their findings on human-to-human transmission of coronavirus internationally rather than nationally. Local health practitioners were not informed by their colleagues, but aware of such a crucial finding from the paper (Q. Li et al. 2020 ) published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Du 2020 ; Qin 2020 ; Wuhan Municipal Health Commission 2020 ).

Since the end of World War II, dissemination of science has been dominated by English, leading to a corresponding decrease for other languages (Larivière and Warren 2019 ). This was also observed for papers published in Chinese, as the number of national publications indexed by China Scientific and Technical Papers and Citation Database (CSTPCD) Footnote 2 started to decrease in 2010 (Figure 2 ). In some disciplines such as Condensed Matter Physics, Applied Mathematics, or Crystallography and Electrochemistry, Chinese scholars even give up publishing papers in local Chinese journals (Shu et al. 2019 ). Some Chinese scholars argue that publishing internationally prevents knowledge dissemination through national journals (Zou and Zhang 2017 ; C.-e. Liu 2018 ). Indeed, in 2019, Chinese researchers have published more papers internationally than they have nationally for the first time.

Number of national and international publications in China (1995-2019) (National Bureau of Statistics of China 1996 –2019)

This can also be observed at the ownership shares of international journals: while Chinese researchers contribute to about 25% of international literature, less than 2% of these international journals are owned by Chinese publishers (ISTIC 2020 ). Such imbalance has been noted by China’s leaders, with Chairman Xi requesting that scientists publish nationally (Xi 2016 ). As a response (Ministry of Science and Technology of China 2020a ), the reform gives emphasis to national scholarly communication by requiring researchers to publish at least one third of their papers in national journals.

Restrictions to Open Access Publishing

Despite limited access to subscription journals (Schiermeier 2018 ), open access (OA) publishing remains controversial in China. Papers published in OA journals are often valued less as those published in subscription journals, and are even excluded from research evaluations. This can be attributed to the perception that OA journals are predatory and perform very little peer review (Li 2006 ; Xu et al. 2018 ; Liu and Huang 2007 ).

Despite this perception, the percentage of Chinese papers published in Gold OA journals has been increasing from 4.9% in 2008 to 30.0% in 2020 in the dimensions.ai database. This percentage is higher than that of the United States (20.5%) and the United Kingdom (21.5%), on a par with that of Japan (30.4%), but remains lower than that of Brazil (55.3%), which publishes mainly in the non-APC journals indexed by its national platform, SciELO. China is, however, among the countries with the lower share of hybrid OA (around 2%), which suggests that paying APCs in subscription journals is not rewarded. The main reason for Chinese scholars to choose OA journals is not research impact or global reach, but whether the journal is indexed by WoS (Xu et al. 2020 ). Commercial publishers have taken advantage of such focus on WoS, and created low quality journals with nominal or no peer review and quick acceptance (Xia et al. 2017 ). For example, IvySpring International Publisher, an Australian OA publisher, has four journals indexed by WoS; almost two thirds of papers published in 2018 were contributed by Chinese authors.

As most OA journals are published outside China, it is believed that a large amount of research funding is lost through APCs (Liu 2018 ). A list of APCs (in 2018) of all OA journals indexed by Web of Science was collected and built in this study. The number of APC paid, and APC revenue generated were calculated on the basis of first affiliated institution in the byline and regular APC rate. Although the APCs are normally billed to the corresponding authors, Chinese scholars only can receive the reimbursement of APC payments when their affiliated institutions are ranked first in the byline. In 2018, the 89,165 OA papers (Gold and Hybrid OA indexed by WoS) published by Chinese institutions as the first affiliated institution incurred around 165 million USD APCs as calculated. Springer Nature generated more than 33 million USD revenue from APCs in China, followed by MDPI (29 million USD), Frontiers (15 million USD) and Hindawi (15 million USD), which focus on the OA publishing (Figure 3 ).

Publishers’ share of China’s OA publishing (2018)

Since the 1990s, the number of international papers indexed by SCI has been applied to research evaluation in China to increase the international visibility of China’s research (Gong and Qu 2010 ; Quan et al. 2017 ). In addition to the research evaluation policies, monetary incentives and performance bonus are also used to encourage Chinese scholars to publish SCI papers (Peng 2011 ; Quan et al. 2017 ; Shu et al. 2020a ), eventually forming a SCI-based research evaluation system in which SCI-based indicators become the most important criterion in tenure assessment, funding application, university ranking and other research assessment activities (Quan et al. 2017 ; Zhao and Ma 2019 ; Shu et al. 2020a ). As a result, Chinese scholars, especially in Natural Sciences, are required to publish SCI papers for their tenure and promotion as university and research institutes rely on such SCI-based indicators for their ranking and funding records (Shu et al. 2020a ; Wang and Li 2015 ).

Although the SCI-based research evaluation system partly contributes to China’s rise in global science, the abusive use of SCI-based indicators in research evaluation has been criticized for a long time since international publications only do not adequately represent China’s research activities (Guan and He 2005 ; Shu et al. 2019 ; Jin and Rousseau 2004 ; Jin et al. 2002 ; Liang and Wu 2001 ; Moed 2002 ; Zhou and Leydesdorff 2007 ). Some scholars even point out that the increase of international publications may come at the expense of dissemination of research to local Chinese communities (Zou and Zhang 2017 ; Xu 2020 ; Liu 2018 ), considering many international publications are less accessible in China because of the paywalls and language barriers. Indeed, the number of local national publications in China has been declining in the past decade as Chinese scholars have published more international publications than local national publications since 2019 (ISTIC 2021 ).

In addition, the SCI-based research evaluation brings a negative goal displacement effect (Frey et al. 2013 ; Osterloh and Frey 2014 ) as the purpose of publishing for some Chinese scholars is not to advance and disseminate knowledge but to complete the research evaluation and receive monetary awards (Quan et al. 2017 ), forming a different reward system of science (Merton 1973 , 1957 ). Furthermore, with the growth of the number of international publications, the number of academic misconducts such as plagiarism, paper mills, fake peer review and so on have also been increasing in China, which seriously affects China’s academic reputation (Hu et al. 2019 ; Tang 2019 ).

Although a science policy reform regarding the SCI-based research evaluation has been called for several years, the SCI-based indicators are still favored by research administration. China’s research evaluation policy is trapped in a dilemma of antinomy (Zhou and Zhang 2017 )—some official documents against the use of SCI-based indicators were issued while some research programs using SCI-based indicators were still promoted (Zhao and Ma 2019 ).

Implications

The new policy by MoST and MoE aims to create a rebalance contributing to global science and supporting national interests. This will not only affect Chinese scholars but the international research community, as China is the largest source contributor to scientific literature. However, no immediate changes to Chinese researchers’ dissemination practices have been noticed over the last eighteen months as Chinese scholars published 590,649 papers indexed by WoS in 2020, reaching its historical high.

What are the Alternative Research Evaluation Criteria?

Although both MoST and MoE intend to say farewell to SCI-based evaluation, they did not reveal how to achieve this beyond general principles. The two ministries delegated this responsibility to provincial departments, which have to design new evaluation systems based on those principles. Considering the top-down administration model in China that officials get used to implementing the policies and executing the orders from the top, it is hard to imagine that the provincial departments could formulate any detailed policies regarding the new evaluation system in a short term. In the following 12 months, all 31 provincial divisions (including 22 provinces, 4 municipalities and 5 autonomous regions) answered the call from MoST and MoE, but in different ways. According to the documents collected in this study, 16 Provincial Departments of Science and Technology issued their corresponding documents while the rest only forwarded the two official documents of MoST and MoE. Furthermore, these 16 new provincial documents do not reveal any alternatives to the SCI, and simply quote the statements made by MoST and MoE.

Indeed, Chinese scholars pointed out the impossibility of finding an alternative in a short term (L. Yu 2020 ), considering the SCI-based research evaluation system has deep roots in China. MoST and MoE emphasize that the future of research evaluation lies in peer review. However, peer review in China is also very controversial, given the strong influence of guanxi (personal relationships) (Shi and Rao 2010 ). Along those lines, given its time and resource consuming aspect, it is difficult to complete a large amount of research evaluations through peer review only (Bornmann 2011 ).

The Voice of the Silent Majority

MoST is responsible for coordinating science and technology activities, whereas MoE administrates universities, which are responsible for most research conducted in the country (83.5% of monographs and 75.5% of journal articles) (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2019 ). National research institutes and funding agencies are affiliated to MoST while MoE operates national research programs such as Project 211, Project 985, and Double First-Class, which provide substantial financial support to a small group of selected universities. Thus, in such dual administration, the policy reform needs to be coordinated by both MoST and MoE.

However, that does not seem to be the case. For instance, the MoE does not seem to push the policy as much as the MoST. On the contrary, MoE keeps promoting the Double First-Class program, which uses WoS/ESI indicators as a key criterion for admission (Chen and Qiu 2019 ; G. Zhao and Ma 2019 ). Recently, MoE issued two documents regarding research evaluation in social sciences and humanities (Ministry of Education of China 2020 ) and university tenure assessment (Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and Ministry of Education of China 2021 ). Those did not contain anything new, and simply restated the measures announced in February 2020. Indeed, some universities have already figured out how to deal with the prohibition—they replaced direct cash-per-publication by a score assigned to each individual SCI paper… a score that could be converted into salary at the end of the year (Quan et al. 2017 ). Since the documents issued by MoST and MoE only prohibit direct cash awards for individual publications, universities or research institutes can use indirect monetary awards instead. Thus, we are far from a revolutionary change in the research evaluation practices of Chinese universities.

Global Leadership

In the 1990s, China launched an ambitious plan (Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and State Council of China 1995 ) for global leadership in science. One may consider the plan to be successful, as the country is now the largest contributor to research papers worldwide. China intends to expand its leadership to academic publishing. The purpose of the new China Science and Technology Journal Excellence Action Plan (CSTJEAP) is not only to encourage Chinese scientists to publish papers in national journals, but also to make their national journals more global.

CSTJEAP will not prevent Chinese researchers from publishing in top international journals. However, it aims to restrict publication in those with less impact, especially Gold and Hybrid OA journals with APCs. For example, we may no longer see many Chinese papers in the Czech Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding (an OA journal indexed by WoS), in which more than half of papers published in 2018 came from Chinese authors. Indeed, those 89,165 China’s OA papers (either Gold or Hybrid OA) were published in 2,638 journals indexed by WoS in 2018; as Table 2 shows, only 335 and 913 journals were respectively included in Quartile 1 of Chinese Academy of Science Journal Partition (CASJP) and Journal Citation Report (JCR) that are used to define the high-quality journals in China. It means that the vast majority of OA papers (between 58,769 and 83,961) are ineligible to be high quality publications (HQPs) for the reimbursement of APCs under the new policy. This may also lead to a decrease of 14.1–20.3% in OA publications worldwide.

Uncertain Future

More than 30 years ago, China opened its doors to the West and embraced the international society; since then, China’s economy has experienced a tremendous growth and has become the fastest growing economy in the world. As a rising power, China created tensions challenging the existing international order (Kim and Gates 2015 ; Punnoose and Vinodan 2019 ), controlled and dominated by Western countries. Under the leadership of Chairman Xi, China has adopted an increasingly ambitious strategy pursuing global leadership not only in politics and economics but also in science, which will influence China’s science policies in the future.

In Chinese perspectives, although China is the largest contributor to global science, its power of discourse (Foucault 1971 ) in academia is still limited as the international scholarly communication system is controlled by Western countries in terms of academic journals, professional association, and academic norms (Zhang 2012 ; Liang 2014 ; Wang 2011 ). It is believed that the Western-centrism (Hobson 2012 ) exists in global science (especially in social sciences) as research topics, paradigms, methodologies, and evaluation are dominated by Western countries through their control over international scholarly communication venues as well as their peer-review process (Yu and Qiu 2021 ; Zhang 2016 ; Wang 2011 ). Some scholars even argue that Western countries use scholarly communication to disseminate Western culture, value and ideology for the purpose of politics (Jiang 2018 ; Xie 2014 ; Zhao 2020 ).

With the increase of the global share of scientific literature, Chinese scholars attempt to convert their roles in global science, from participants to leaders; sharing and gaining the power of academic discourse is considered as the prerequisite (Zhang 2016 ; Xu 2020 ; Zhang 2012 ; Shen 2016 ; Hu 2013 ). One example is that IEEE had to drop its ban on using Huawei scientists as reviewers under the pressure amid boycott from China’s academia (Mervis 2019 ; IEEE 2019 ). Indeed, Academic Discourse Power has become a popular research and news topic in China in the past decade (Figure 4 ). Some proposals suggest building a new global scholarly communication system including China-owned English journals, self-reliant citation index, and a database indexing English abstracts of Chinese papers (Wu and Tong 2017 ; Zhou 2012 ; Zhang and Zhen 2017 ; Fang 2020 ; Lu 2018 ), which was adopted in the two official documents by MoST and MoE.

Number of Chinese Publications Regarding Academic Discourse Power from CNKI (2011–2020)

Recently, China released its 14th five-year social and economic development plan, which identifies scholarly communication as an approach disseminating China’s culture, beliefs and values, and emphasises more self-reliance rather than international collaboration in science and technology development (Government of People's Republic of China 2021 ). The plan mentions the proposal building a national scholarly communication system in response to Chairman Xi’s call to “publish papers on homeland” (Xi 2016 ). Although these long term goals will not come into effect immediately, even be replaced by other strategies in the next five-year plan, they create uncertainty for the future of global science considering the possible conflict between the rising power and traditional powers in science.

China’s future involvement in international collaboration is another uncertain consequence to global science. In the past decades, China has been promoting international collaborations through various mobility funding initiatives (Quan et al. 2019 ). The China Scholarship Council, administrated by MoE, annually funds almost 20,000 Chinese scholars for a 6–12-month international stay as visiting scholars (Wu 2017 ), while National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), administrated by MoST, offers funding for foreign researchers to encourage international collaboration (Yuan et al. 2018 ). As Figure 5 shows, the number of international collaboration papers (indexed by WoS) in China has been increasing in the past two decades; however, the ratio of international collaboration papers to all international papers decreased in 2019 and 2020. We are not sure whether the decrease is attributed to the policy reform or due to the pandemic when international mobility was strictly limited (Lee and Haupt 2021 ).

International Collaboration Publications in China (2000–2020)

Two years into the pandemic, the documents issued by MoST and MoE appear more like a communication exercise to appease public anger than the start of a strong policy reform. With the top-down administration model based on the centralized Chinese government, the SCI-based evaluation system was promoted from the top (e.g., MoST, MoE, etc.) and followed by the bottom (e.g., universities, research institutes, etc.). Thus, the MoST and MoE should not shirk their responsibilities and create ambiguous and non-transparent policies (Qi 2017 ; Shu et al. 2020b ) when promoting the policy reform. For example, MoE should reconstruct the Double First Class program that is highly based on ESI indicators (Chen and Qiu 2019 ; Zhao and Ma 2019 ); MSFC, administrated by MoST, should give national publications the same weight as international publications when evaluating funding applications. Chinese universities and research institutes need to receive a clear and consistent signal that the policy reform is not only an armchair strategist.

Indeed, many negative effects don’t originate from the nature of the SCI-based indicators but come from the administrative purpose of research evaluation, which contributed many “beautiful” numbers in terms of the number of publications and rankings rather than real advancement of knowledge. China’s scientific administration should be aware that a successful research evaluation system should be completely merit-based; and the policy reform should start from the top.

In July 2021, the General Office of the State Council of China ( 2021 ) issued another new document providing the principles for designing a new research evaluation system in science and technology, which duplicates most contents of previous documents. Unfortunately, a detailed proposal regarding the new research evaluation system is still missing.

Data availability

Not applicable.

Code availability

Although the first Chinese scientific development plan (Project 863) started in 1986, the milestone of China’s scientific development is Xiaoping Deng’s (China’s former leader) declaration “Science and technology are primary productive forces” in 1988, which has guided China’s scientific development in several decades. In 1993, China legislated the first version of the Law of the People's Republic of China on Science and Technology Progress; in 1995, China initiated the national strategy of “invigorating China through the development of science and education”. As a result, Project 211 and Project 985 were launched in 1995 and 1998 respectively.

CSTPCD, developed by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC) in 1987, indexes more than 2,000 national scientific journals for the purpose of research evaluation of China’s scientists and engineers. The number of papers indexed by CSTPCD and number of Chinese papers indexed by SCI, representing national and international publications respectively, are reported in annual Statistical Data of China’s S&T Papers , and included in the China Statistical Yearbook .

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Paper Tiger? Chinese Science and Home Bias in Citations

We investigate the phenomenon of home bias in scientific citations, where researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country. We develop a benchmark for expected citations based on the relative size of countries, defining home bias as deviations from this norm. Our findings reveal that China exhibits the largest home bias across all major countries and in nearly all scientific fields studied. This stands in contrast to the pattern of home bias for China’s trade in goods and services, where China does not stand out from most industrialized countries. After adjusting citation counts for home bias, we demonstrate that China’s apparent rise in citation rankings is overstated. Our adjusted ranking places China fourth globally, behind the US, the UK, and Germany, tempering the perception of China’s scientific dominance.

All authors contributed equally. Address correspondence to [email protected]. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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China now publishes more high-quality science than any other nation. Should the US be worried?

by Caroline Wagner, The Conversation

By at least one measure, China now leads the world in producing high-quality science . My research shows that Chinese scholars now publish a larger fraction of the top 1% most cited scientific papers globally than scientists from any other country.

I am a policy expert and analyst who studies how governmental investment in science, technology and innovation improves social welfare. While a country's scientific prowess is somewhat difficult to quantify, I'd argue that the amount of money spent on scientific research , the number of scholarly papers published and the quality of those papers are good stand-in measures.

China is not the only nation to drastically improve its science capacity in recent years, but China's rise has been particularly dramatic. This has left U.S. policy experts and government officials worried about how China's scientific supremacy will shift the global balance of power . China's recent ascendancy results from years of governmental policy aiming to be tops in science and technology. The country has taken explicit steps to get where it is today, and the U.S. now has a choice to make about how to respond to a scientifically competitive China.

Growth across decades

In 1977, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping introduced the Four Modernizations , one of which was strengthening China's science sector and technological progress. As recently as 2000, the U.S. produced many times the number of scientific papers as China annually. However, over the past three decades or so, China has invested funds to grow domestic research capabilities, to send students and researchers abroad to study, and to encourage Chinese businesses to shift to manufacturing high-tech products.

Since 2000, China has sent an estimated 5.2 million students and scholars to study abroad . The majority of them studied science or engineering. Many of these students remained where they studied, but an increasing number return to China to work in well-resourced laboratories and high-tech companies.

Today, China is second only to the U.S. in how much it spends on science and technology . Chinese universities now produce the largest number of engineering Ph.D.s in the world, and the quality of Chinese universities has dramatically improved in recent years .

Producing more and better science

Thanks to all this investment and a growing, capable workforce, China's scientific output—as measured by the number of total published papers—has increased steadily over the years. In 2017, Chinese scholars published more scientific papers than U.S. researchers for the first time.

Quantity does not necessarily mean quality though. For many years, researchers in the West wrote off Chinese research as low quality and often as simply imitating research from the U.S. and Europe . During the 2000s and 2010s, much of the work coming from China did not receive significant attention from the global scientific community.

But as China has continued to invest in science, I began to wonder whether the explosion in the quantity of research was accompanied by improving quality.

To quantify China's scientific strength, my colleagues and I looked at citations. A citation is when an academic paper is referenced—or cited—by another paper. We considered that the more times a paper has been cited, the higher quality and more influential the work. Given that logic, the top 1% most cited papers should represent the upper echelon of high-quality science.

My colleagues and I counted how many papers published by a country were in the top 1% of science as measured by the number of citations in various disciplines. Going year by year from 2015 to 2019, we then compared different countries. We were surprised to find that in 2019, Chinese authors published a greater percentage of the most influential papers , with China claiming 8,422 articles in the top category, while the U.S had 7,959 and the European Union had 6,074. In just one recent example, we found that in 2022, Chinese researchers published three times as many papers on artificial intelligence as U.S. researchers; in the top 1% most cited AI research, Chinese papers outnumbered U.S. papers by a 2-to-1 ratio. Similar patterns can be seen with China leading in the top 1% most cited papers in nanoscience, chemistry and transportation.

Our research also found that Chinese research was surprisingly novel and creative —and not simply copying western researchers. To measure this, we looked at the mix of disciplines referenced in scientific papers . The more diverse and varied the referenced research was in a single paper, the more interdisciplinary and novel we considered the work. We found Chinese research to be as innovative as other top performing countries.

Taken together, these measures suggest that China is now no longer an imitator nor producer of only low-quality science. China is now a scientific power on par with the U.S. and Europe, both in quantity and in quality.

Fear or collaboration?

Scientific capability is intricately tied to both military and economic power. Because of this relationship, many in the U.S.—from politicians to policy experts —have expressed concern that China's scientific rise is a threat to the U.S., and the government has taken steps to slow China's growth. The recent Chips and Science Act of 2022 explicitly limits cooperation with China in some areas of research and manufacturing. In October 2022, the Biden administration put restrictions in place to limit China's access to key technologies with military applications .

A number of scholars, including me, see these fears and policy responses as rooted in a nationalistic view that doesn't wholly map onto the global endeavor of science.

Academic research in the modern world is in large part driven by the exchange of ideas and information. The results are published in publicly available journals that anyone can read. Science is also becoming ever more international and collaborative , with researchers around the world depending on each other to push their fields forward. Recent collaborative research on cancer , COVID-19 and agriculture are just a few of many examples. My own work has also shown that when researchers from China and the U.S. collaborate, they produce higher quality science than either one alone.

China has joined the ranks of top scientific and technological nations, and some of the concerns over shifts of power are reasonable in my view. But the U.S. can also benefit from China's scientific rise. With many global issues facing the planet—like climate change , to name just one—there may be wisdom in looking at this new situation as not only a threat, but also an opportunity.

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• Most People in 35 Countries Say China Has a Large Impact on Their National Economy

1. Views of China and Xi Jinping

Table of contents.

• Overall favorability of China
• Confidence in Xi
• How much influence do people think China has on their country’s economy?
• Do people think China’s economic influence is positive or negative?
• Views of Chinese firms operating abroad
• Concerns about China’s territorial disputes with its neighbors
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Across the 35 countries we surveyed, more have unfavorable views of China than favorable ones. The same is true when it comes to Chinese President Xi Jinping: People mostly lack confidence in him to do the right thing regarding world affairs.

But opinions vary widely across regions and across levels of economic development. For example, in the high-income European countries included in the survey, views of China and Xi tend to be broadly negative, while in middle-income nations in sub-Saharan Africa, views are significantly more positive.

Views tend to be among the most and least positive in the Asia-Pacific region – more positive in middle-income countries like Malaysia and Thailand, and more negative in high-income ones like Australia, Japan and South Korea.

A 35-country median of 35% have a favorable view of China, compared with a median of 52% who have a negative view. Opinions vary widely, from 11% favorable in Sweden to 80% favorable in Thailand.

In the 18 high-income countries we polled, views of China are, on balance, negative. There are three notable exceptions where opinion of China is either divided or net positive: Chile, Greece and Singapore. Among Singaporeans, those who are ethnically Chinese are particularly favorable (71%). A majority of Singaporeans who are not ethnically Chinese also see China favorably (59%).

In the 17 middle-income countries we polled, views of China are much rosier. Though three countries stand out for having more negative than positive views: India, the Philippines and Turkey.

Views of China over time

Views of China have turned slightly more positive since last year in Argentina, Canada and Greece (+7 percentage points each).

Over the same period, favorable views have decreased significantly in Israel (-15) and Hungary (-7).

The sharp decrease in favorability among Israelis follows a number of Chinese policy positions related to the Israel-Hamas war. China was an early proponent of a cease-fire in Gaza , and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi accused Israel of going “beyond the scope of self-defense” in the first days of the war. (The survey predated Xi’s calls for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in his May meetings with Arab leaders .)

Jewish Israelis (25%) have much less favorable views of China than Arab Israelis do (61%). Among Jewish Israelis, this reflects an 18-point decrease in favorability since last year; among Arab Israelis, the decrease was 7 points.

In Hungary, the survey followed China’s offer for a security pact between the two countries but occurred before Xi’s May visit to Budapest .

We also see significant shifts in opinion in some of the countries not surveyed since before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic :

• In the Philippines and Turkey, favorable views have fallen 6 and 11 percentage points, respectively, since 2019.
• In Chile, they’ve fallen 8 points since 2017.
• In Colombia, they’ve increased 12 points since 2017.

In Ghana, the share who are unsure or decline to answer the question has dropped significantly since 2017, and in turn, both positive (+11) and negative (+7) views of China have increased. The same has also happened in Tunisia since 2019: Positive views have increased 5 points (from 63% to 68%) and negative views have increased 9 points (from 16% to 25%) while the share who decline to answer decreased significantly.

Views by age

Younger people tend to have more favorable opinions of China than older people do. This has long been the case in the United States , and is also true in over half of the other countries surveyed.

Gaps are particularly large in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru and the United Kingdom, where those ages 18 to 34 are around 25 points more likely than those 50 and older to view China positively.

Only in Hungary and South Korea is the pattern reversed, with younger people feeling less favorably toward China.

Views by ideology

In most countries, views of China are not an ideological issue. But, in the U.S. and Israel, those who place themselves on the left of the ideological spectrum (“liberals” in the U.S.) have more favorable views than those on the right (“conservatives” in the U.S.).

In Bangladesh, Hungary, the Netherlands and Spain, those on the right tend to have more positive views on China than those on the left.

Few internationally have confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping. A 35-country median of 24% express at least a fair amount confidence in the leader, while 62% have little to no confidence. However, opinion varies widely across high- and middle-income countries (49% and 12% confidence at the median, respectively), as well as across regions.

Views are least positive in North America and Europe: Clear majorities in each country surveyed there have little or no confidence in Xi.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Xi gets some of his highest and lowest ratings. Positive ratings tend to be more common in middle-income countries than high-income countries. For example, roughly half or more in Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Thailand have at least a fair amount of confidence in Xi. Conversely, in Australia, Japan and South Korea, at least eight-in-ten lack confidence in him. Middle-income India, where more lack confidence in Xi, and high-income Singapore, where most have confidence in Xi, are two notable exceptions to this pattern.

Views of Xi are more positive than negative in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in Kenya (64% vs. 33%) and Nigeria (59% vs. 30%). Notably, large shares in South Africa (33%) and Ghana (21%) refuse to answer or are unsure.

In the Middle East-North Africa region, views of Xi lean positive in Tunisia, but much smaller shares have confidence in him in Israel and Turkey. In Latin America, only around three-in-ten or fewer have confidence in Xi in every country surveyed.

Views of Xi over time

Among countries last surveyed in 2023, opinions of the Chinese leader have become slightly less positive in South Africa (-9) and Israel (-6) and slightly more positive in Argentina (+6) and Hungary (+7).

Confidence has also fallen slightly in two countries last surveyed in 2022: Malaysia (-7) and Singapore (-6).

And, in the Philippines, last surveyed in 2019, confidence has fallen 13 points, from 58% to 45%.

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Study finds health risks in switching ships from diesel to ammonia fuel

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As container ships the size of city blocks cross the oceans to deliver cargo, their huge diesel engines emit large quantities of air pollutants that drive climate change and have human health impacts. It has been estimated that maritime shipping accounts for almost 3 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and the industry’s negative impacts on air quality cause about 100,000 premature deaths each year.

Decarbonizing shipping to reduce these detrimental effects is a goal of the International Maritime Organization, a U.N. agency that regulates maritime transport. One potential solution is switching the global fleet from fossil fuels to sustainable fuels such as ammonia, which could be nearly carbon-free when considering its production and use.

But in a new study, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from MIT and elsewhere caution that burning ammonia for maritime fuel could worsen air quality further and lead to devastating public health impacts, unless it is adopted alongside strengthened emissions regulations.

Ammonia combustion generates nitrous oxide (N 2 O), a greenhouse gas that is about 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It also emits nitrogen in the form of nitrogen oxides (NO and NO 2,  referred to as NO x ), and unburnt ammonia may slip out, which eventually forms fine particulate matter in the atmosphere. These tiny particles can be inhaled deep into the lungs, causing health problems like heart attacks, strokes, and asthma.

The new study indicates that, under current legislation, switching the global fleet to ammonia fuel could cause up to about 600,000 additional premature deaths each year. However, with stronger regulations and cleaner engine technology, the switch could lead to about 66,000 fewer premature deaths than currently caused by maritime shipping emissions, with far less impact on global warming.

“Not all climate solutions are created equal. There is almost always some price to pay. We have to take a more holistic approach and consider all the costs and benefits of different climate solutions, rather than just their potential to decarbonize,” says Anthony Wong, a postdoc in the MIT Center for Global Change Science and lead author of the study.

His co-authors include Noelle Selin, an MIT professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS); Sebastian Eastham, a former principal research scientist who is now a senior lecturer at Imperial College London; Christine Mounaïm-Rouselle, a professor at the University of Orléans in France; Yiqi Zhang, a researcher at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; and Florian Allroggen, a research scientist in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The research appears this week in Environmental Research Letters.

Greener, cleaner ammonia

Traditionally, ammonia is made by stripping hydrogen from natural gas and then combining it with nitrogen at extremely high temperatures. This process is often associated with a large carbon footprint. The maritime shipping industry is betting on the development of “green ammonia,” which is produced by using renewable energy to make hydrogen via electrolysis and to generate heat.

“In theory, if you are burning green ammonia in a ship engine, the carbon emissions are almost zero,” Wong says.

But even the greenest ammonia generates nitrous oxide (N 2 O), nitrogen oxides (NO x ) when combusted, and some of the ammonia may slip out, unburnt. This nitrous oxide would escape into the atmosphere, where the greenhouse gas would remain for more than 100 years. At the same time, the nitrogen emitted as NO x and ammonia would fall to Earth, damaging fragile ecosystems. As these emissions are digested by bacteria, additional N 2 O  is produced.

NO x and ammonia also mix with gases in the air to form fine particulate matter. A primary contributor to air pollution, fine particulate matter kills an estimated 4 million people each year.

“Saying that ammonia is a ‘clean’ fuel is a bit of an overstretch. Just because it is carbon-free doesn’t necessarily mean it is clean and good for public health,” Wong says.

A multifaceted model

The researchers wanted to paint the whole picture, capturing the environmental and public health impacts of switching the global fleet to ammonia fuel. To do so, they designed scenarios to measure how pollutant impacts change under certain technology and policy assumptions.

From a technological point of view, they considered two ship engines. The first burns pure ammonia, which generates higher levels of unburnt ammonia but emits fewer nitrogen oxides. The second engine technology involves mixing ammonia with hydrogen to improve combustion and optimize the performance of a catalytic converter, which controls both nitrogen oxides and unburnt ammonia pollution.

They also considered three policy scenarios: current regulations, which only limit NO x emissions in some parts of the world; a scenario that adds ammonia emission limits over North America and Western Europe; and a scenario that adds global limits on ammonia and NO x emissions.

The researchers used a ship track model to calculate how pollutant emissions change under each scenario and then fed the results into an air quality model. The air quality model calculates the impact of ship emissions on particulate matter and ozone pollution. Finally, they estimated the effects on global public health.

One of the biggest challenges came from a lack of real-world data, since no ammonia-powered ships are yet sailing the seas. Instead, the researchers relied on experimental ammonia combustion data from collaborators to build their model.

“We had to come up with some clever ways to make that data useful and informative to both the technology and regulatory situations,” he says.

A range of outcomes

In the end, they found that with no new regulations and ship engines that burn pure ammonia, switching the entire fleet would cause 681,000 additional premature deaths each year.

“While a scenario with no new regulations is not very realistic, it serves as a good warning of how dangerous ammonia emissions could be. And unlike NO x , ammonia emissions from shipping are currently unregulated,” Wong says.

However, even without new regulations, using cleaner engine technology would cut the number of premature deaths down to about 80,000, which is about 20,000 fewer than are currently attributed to maritime shipping emissions. With stronger global regulations and cleaner engine technology, the number of people killed by air pollution from shipping could be reduced by about 66,000.

“The results of this study show the importance of developing policies alongside new technologies,” Selin says. “There is a potential for ammonia in shipping to be beneficial for both climate and air quality, but that requires that regulations be designed to address the entire range of potential impacts, including both climate and air quality.”

Ammonia’s air quality impacts would not be felt uniformly across the globe, and addressing them fully would require coordinated strategies across very different contexts. Most premature deaths would occur in East Asia, since air quality regulations are less stringent in this region. Higher levels of existing air pollution cause the formation of more particulate matter from ammonia emissions. In addition, shipping volume over East Asia is far greater than elsewhere on Earth, compounding these negative effects.

In the future, the researchers want to continue refining their analysis. They hope to use these findings as a starting point to urge the marine industry to share engine data they can use to better evaluate air quality and climate impacts. They also hope to inform policymakers about the importance and urgency of updating shipping emission regulations.

This research was funded by the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium.

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China’s Economy Slows Sharply as Housing Troubles Squeeze Spending

After a strong start to the year, spending has slumped as a real estate downturn weighs on consumers. Communist Party leaders are meeting this week to discuss what to do about it.

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By Keith Bradsher

Reporting from Beijing, Shanghai, Nanchang and Jingdezhen, China

Economic growth slumped in China through the spring after a strong start this year, according to data released on Monday, as a real estate crash caused consumers to spend more cautiously.

The latest growth statistics for the world’s second-largest economy, covering April through June, put further pressure on the Communist Party as its leaders gathered on Monday in Beijing for a four-day conclave to set a course for the country’s economic future.

In a country known for strict controls on information, the Chinese government is maintaining a particularly tight grip ahead of the party gathering, known as the Third Plenum , which typically takes place every five years. China’s National Bureau of Statistics canceled its usual news conference that accompanies the release of data and Chinese companies are mostly avoiding the release of earnings reports this week.

China’s economy grew 0.7 percent in the second quarter over the previous three months, below the expectations of most economists. When projected out for the entire year, the economy grew at an annual rate of about 2.8 percent — a little less than half the rate in the first three months of this year.

The statistical bureau also revised down its estimate of growth in the first quarter. That rate, projected out for the full year, was about 6.1 percent, not the 6.6 percent rate disclosed in April.

Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, is trying to win confidence in his policies as growth falters and the property market suffers.

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The trends defining the $1.8 trillion global wellness market in 2024

From cold plunges to collagen to celery juice, the $1.8 trillion global consumer wellness market is no stranger to fads, which can sometimes surface with limited clinical research or credibility. Today, consumers are no longer simply trying out these wellness trends and hoping for the best, but rather asking, “What does the science say?”

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Shaun Callaghan , Hayley Doner, Jonathan Medalsy, Anna Pione , and Warren Teichner , representing views from McKinsey’s Consumer Packaged Goods and Private Equity & Principal Investors Practices.

McKinsey’s latest Future of Wellness research—which surveyed more than 5,000 consumers across China, the United Kingdom, and the United States—examines the trends shaping the consumer wellness landscape. In this article, we pair these findings with a look at seven wellness subsets—including women’s health, weight management, and in-person fitness—that our research suggests are especially ripe areas for innovation and investment activity.

The science- and data-backed future of wellness

In the United States alone, we estimate that the wellness market has reached $480 billion, growing at 5 to 10 percent per year. Eighty-two percent of US consumers now consider wellness a top or important priority in their everyday lives, which is similar to what consumers in the United Kingdom and China report (73 percent and 87 percent, respectively).

This is especially true among Gen Z and millennial consumers, who are now purchasing more wellness products and services than older generations, across the same dimensions we outlined in our previous research : health, sleep, nutrition, fitness, appearance, and mindfulness (Exhibit 1). 1 “ Still feeling good: The US wellness market continues to boom ,” McKinsey, September 19, 2022.

Across the globe, responses to our survey questions revealed a common theme about consumer expectations: consumers want effective, data-driven, science-backed health and wellness solutions (Exhibit 2).

Five trends shaping the consumer health and wellness space in 2024

Fifty-eight percent of US respondents to our survey said they are prioritizing wellness more now than they did a year ago. The following five trends encompass their newly emerging priorities, as well as those that are consistent with our earlier research.

Trend one: Health at home

The COVID-19 pandemic made at-home testing kits a household item. As the pandemic has moved into its endemic phase, consumers are expressing greater interest in other kinds of at-home kits: 26 percent of US consumers are interested in testing for vitamin and mineral deficiencies at home, 24 percent for cold and flu symptoms, and 23 percent for cholesterol levels.

At-home diagnostic tests are appealing to consumers because they offer greater convenience than going to a doctor’s office, quick results, and the ability to test frequently. In China, 35 percent of consumers reported that they had even replaced some in-person healthcare appointments with at-home diagnostic tests—a higher share than in the United States or the United Kingdom.

Although there is growing interest in the space, some consumers express hesitancy. In the United States and the United Kingdom, top barriers to adoption include the preference to see a doctor in person, a perceived lack of need, and price; in China, test accuracy is a concern for approximately 30 percent of consumers.

Implications for companies: Companies can address three critical considerations to help ensure success in this category. First, companies will want to determine the right price value equation for at-home diagnostic kits since cost still presents a major barrier for many consumers today. Second, companies should consider creating consumer feedback loops, encouraging users to take action based on their test results and then test again to assess the impact of those interventions. Third, companies that help consumers understand their test results—either through the use of generative AI to help analyze and deliver personalized results, or through integration with telehealth services—could develop a competitive advantage.

Trend two: A new era for biomonitoring and wearables

Roughly half of all consumers we surveyed have purchased a fitness wearable at some point in time. While wearable devices such as watches have been popular for years, new modalities powered by breakthrough technologies have ushered in a new era for biomonitoring and wearable devices.

Wearable biometric rings, for example, are now equipped with sensors that provide consumers with insights about their sleep quality through paired mobile apps. Continuous glucose monitors, which can be applied to the back of the user’s arm, provide insights about the user’s blood sugar levels, which may then be interpreted by a nutritionist who can offer personalized health guidance.

Roughly one-third of surveyed wearable users said they use their devices more often than they did last year, and more than 75 percent of all surveyed consumers indicated an openness to using a wearable in the future. We expect the use of wearable devices to continue to grow, particularly as companies track a wider range of health indicators.

Implications for companies: While there is a range of effective wearable solutions on the market today for fitness and sleep, there are fewer for nutrition, weight management, and mindfulness, presenting an opportunity for companies to fill these gaps.

Wearables makers and health product and services providers in areas such as nutrition, fitness, and sleep can explore partnerships that try to make the data collected through wearable devices actionable, which could drive greater behavioral change among consumers. One example: a consumer interested in managing stress levels might wear a device that tracks spikes in cortisol. Companies could then use this data to make personalized recommendations for products related to wellness, fitness, and mindfulness exercises.

Businesses must keep data privacy and clarity of insights top of mind. Roughly 30 percent of China, UK, and US consumers are open to using a wearable device only if the data is shared exclusively with them. Additionally, requiring too much manual data input or sharing overly complicated insights could diminish the user experience. Ensuring that data collection is transparent and that insights are simple to understand and targeted to consumers’ specific health goals or risk factors will be crucial to attracting potential consumers.

Trend three: Personalization’s gen AI boost

Nearly one in five US consumers and one in three US millennials prefer personalized products and services. While the preference for personalized wellness products was lower than in years prior, we believe this is likely due to consumers becoming more selective about which personalized products and services they use.

Technological advancements and the rise of first-party data are giving personalization a new edge. Approximately 20 percent of consumers in the United Kingdom and the United States and 30 percent in China look for personalized products and services that use biometric data to provide recommendations. There is an opportunity to pair these tools with gen AI to unlock greater precision and customization. In fact, gen AI has already made its way to the wearables and app space: some wearables use gen AI to design customized workouts for users based on their fitness data.

Implications for companies: Companies that offer software-based health and wellness services to consumers are uniquely positioned to incorporate gen AI into their personalization offerings. Other businesses could explore partnerships with companies that use gen AI to create personalized wellness recommendations.

Trend four: Clinical over clean

Last year, we saw consumers begin to shift away from wellness products with clean or natural ingredients to those with clinically proven ingredients. Today, that shift is even more evident. Roughly half of UK and US consumers reported clinical effectiveness as a top purchasing factor, while only about 20 percent reported the same for natural or clean ingredients. This trend is most pronounced in categories such as over-the-counter medications and vitamins and supplements (Exhibit 3).

In China, consumers expressed roughly equal overall preference for clinical and clean products, although there were some variations between categories. They prioritized clinical efficacy for digestive medication, topical treatments, and eye care products, while they preferred natural and clean ingredients for supplements, superfoods, and personal-care products.

Implications for companies: To meet consumer demand for clinically proven products, some brands will be able to emphasize existing products in their portfolios, while other businesses may have to rethink product formulations and strategy. While wellness companies that have built a brand around clean or natural products—particularly those with a dedicated customer base—may not want to pivot away from their existing value proposition, they can seek out third-party certifications to help substantiate their claims and reach more consumers.

Companies can boost the clinical credibility of their products by using clinically tested ingredients, running third-party research studies on their products, securing recommendations from healthcare providers and scientists, and building a medical board that weighs in on product development.

Trend five: The rise of the doctor recommendation

The proliferation of influencer marketing in the consumer space has created new sources of wellness information—with varying degrees of credibility. As consumers look to avoid “healthwashing” (that is, deceptive marketing that positions a product as healthier than it really is), healthcare provider recommendations are important once again.

Doctor recommendations are the third-highest-ranked source of influence on consumer health and wellness purchase decisions in the United States (Exhibit 4). Consumers said they are most influenced by doctors’ recommendations when seeking care related to mindfulness, sleep, and overall health (which includes the use of vitamins, over-the-counter medications, and personal- and home-care products).

Implications for companies: Brands need to consider which messages and which messengers are most likely to resonate with their consumers. We have found that a company selling products related to mindfulness may want to use predominately doctor recommendations and social media advertising, whereas a company selling fitness products may want to leverage recommendations from friends and family, as well as endorsements from personal trainers.

Seven areas of growth in the wellness space

Building upon last year’s research, several pockets of growth in the wellness space are emerging. Increasing consumer interest, technological breakthroughs, product innovation, and an increase in chronic illnesses have catalyzed growth in these areas.

Women’s health

Historically, women’s health has been underserved and underfunded . Today, purchases of women’s health products are on the rise across a range of care needs (Exhibit 5). While the highest percentage of respondents said they purchased menstrual-care and sexual-health products, consumers said they spent the most on menopause and pregnancy-related products in the past year.

Digital tools are also becoming more prevalent in the women’s health landscape. For example, wearable devices can track a user’s physiological signals to identify peak fertility windows.

Despite recent growth in the women’s health space, there is still unmet demand for products and services. Menopause has been a particularly overlooked segment of the market: only 5 percent of FemTech  start-ups address menopause needs. 2 Christine Hall, “Why more startups and VCs are finally pursuing the menopause market: ‘$600B is not “niche,”’” Crunchbase, January 21, 2021.   Consumers also continue to engage with offerings across the women’s health space, including menstrual and intimate care, fertility support, pregnancy and motherhood products, and women-focused healthcare centers, presenting opportunities for companies to expand products and services in these areas.

Healthy aging

Demand for products and services that support healthy aging and longevity is on the rise, propelled by a shift toward preventive medicine, the growth of health technology (such as telemedicine and digital-health monitoring), and advances in research on antiaging products.

Roughly 70 percent of consumers in the United Kingdom and the United States and 85 percent in China indicated that they have purchased more in this category in the past year than in prior years.

More than 60 percent of consumers surveyed considered it “very” or “extremely” important to purchase products or services that help with healthy aging and longevity. Roughly 70 percent of consumers in the United Kingdom and the United States and 85 percent in China indicated that they have purchased more in this category in the past year than in prior years. These results were similar across age groups, suggesting that the push toward healthy aging is spurred both by younger generations seeking preventive solutions and older generations seeking to improve their longevity. As populations across developed economies continue to age (one in six people in the world will be aged 60 or older by 2030 3 “Ageing and health,” World Health Organization, October 1, 2022. ), we expect there to be an even greater focus globally on healthy aging.

To succeed in this market, companies can take a holistic approach to healthy-aging solutions , which includes considerations about mental health and social factors. Bringing products and services to market that anticipate the needs of aging consumers—instead of emphasizing the aging process to sell these products—will be particularly important. For example, a service that addresses aging in older adults might focus on one aspect of longevity, such as fitness or nutrition, rather than the process of aging itself.

Weight management

Weight management is top of mind for consumers in the United States, where nearly one in three adults struggles with obesity 4 Obesity fact sheet 508 , US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, July 2022. ; 60 percent of US consumers in our survey said they are currently trying to lose weight.

While exercise is by far the most reported weight management intervention in our survey, more than 50 percent of US consumers considered prescription medication, including glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) drugs, to be a “very effective” intervention. Prescription medication is perceived differently elsewhere: less than 30 percent of UK and China consumers considered weight loss drugs to be very effective.

Given the recency of the GLP-1 weight loss trend, it is too early to understand how it will affect the broader consumer health and wellness market. Companies should continue to monitor the space as further data emerges on adoption rates and impact across categories.

In-person fitness

Fitness has shifted from a casual interest to a priority for many consumers: around 50 percent of US gym-goers said that fitness is a core part of their identity (Exhibit 6). This trend is even stronger among younger consumers—56 percent of US Gen Z consumers surveyed considered fitness a “very high priority” (compared with 40 percent of overall US consumers).

In-person fitness classes and personal training are the top two areas where consumers expect to spend more on fitness. Consumers expect to maintain their spending on fitness club memberships and fitness apps.

The challenge for fitness businesses will be to retain consumers among an ever-increasing suite of choices. Offering best-in-class facilities, convenient locations and hours, and loyalty and referral programs are table stakes. Building strong communities and offering experiences such as retreats, as well as services such as nutritional coaching and personalized workout plans (potentially enabled by gen AI), can help top players evolve their value proposition and manage customer acquisition costs.

More than 80 percent of consumers in China, the United Kingdom, and the United States consider gut health to be important, and over 50 percent anticipate making it a higher priority in the next two to three years.

One-third of US consumers, one-third of UK consumers, and half of Chinese consumers said they wish there were more products in the market to support their gut health.

While probiotic supplements are the most frequently used gut health products in China and the United States, UK consumers opt for probiotic-rich foods such as kimchi, kombucha, or yogurt, as well as over-the-counter medications. About one-third of US consumers, one-third of UK consumers, and half of Chinese consumers said they wish there were more products in the market to support their gut health. At-home microbiome testing and personalized nutrition are two areas where companies can build on the growing interest in this segment.

Sexual health

The expanded cultural conversation about sexuality, improvements in sexual education, and growing support for female sexual-health challenges (such as low libido, vaginal dryness, and pain during intercourse) have all contributed to the growth in demand for sexual-health products.

Eighty-seven percent of US consumers reported having spent the same or more on sexual-health products in the past year than in the year prior, and they said they purchased personal lubricants, contraceptives, and adult toys most frequently.

While more businesses began to sell sexual-health products online during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a range of retailers—from traditional pharmacies to beauty retailers to department stores—are now adding more sexual-health brands and items to their store shelves. 5 Keerthi Vedantam, “Why more sexual wellness startups are turned on by retail,” Crunchbase, November 15, 2022.   This creates marketing and distribution opportunities for disruptor brands to reach new audiences and increase scale.

Despite consistently ranking as the second-highest health and wellness priority for consumers, sleep is also the area where consumers said they have the most unmet needs. In our previous report, 37 percent of US consumers expressed a desire for additional sleep and mindfulness products and services, such as those that address cognitive functioning, stress, and anxiety management. In the year since, little has changed. One of the major challenges in improving sleep is the sheer number of factors that can affect a good night’s sleep, including diet, exercise, caffeination, screen time, stress, and other lifestyle factors. As a result, few, if any, tech players and emerging brands in the sleep space have been able to create a compelling ecosystem to improve consumer sleep holistically. Leveraging consumer data to address specific pain points more effectively—including inducing sleep, minimizing sleep interruptions, easing wakefulness, and improving sleep quality—presents an opportunity for companies.

As consumers take more control over their health outcomes, they are looking for data-backed, accessible products and services that empower them to do so. Companies that can help consumers make sense of this data and deliver solutions that are personalized, relevant, and rooted in science will be best positioned to succeed.

Shaun Callaghan is a partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office; Hayley Doner is a consultant in the Paris office; and Jonathan Medalsy is an associate partner in the New York office, where Anna Pione is a partner and Warren Teichner is a senior partner.

The authors wish to thank Celina Bade, Cherry Chen, Eric Falardeau, Lily Fu, Eric He, Sara Hudson, Charlotte Lucas, Maria Neely, Olga Ostromecka, Akshay Rao, Michael Rix, and Alex Sanford for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Alexandra Mondalek, an editor in the New York office.

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