The latest global rankings on university research by the journal Nature has been released and China has vaulted into the lead, with US universities sliding rapidly down.

In the last decade, a profound shift has taken place in global academia that has fundamentally altered the hierarchy of scientific research. China, once considered a peripheral player in cutting-edge science, has now ascended to the forefront of academic excellence. The latest Nature Index rankings reveal an astonishing trend: nine of the world’s top 10 research institutions are now Chinese, with Harvard University being the sole Western presence in the upper echelon.

This seismic transformation, while the Trump administration is instituting deep cuts in funding for research and shutting down the Department of Education, underscores not only China’s scientific prowess but also its strategic vision for global leadership in innovation and technology. To fully appreciate China’s meteoric rise, one must look back at the academic landscape a decade ago. When the Nature Index Global rankings were first released in 2014, only eight Chinese universities made it into the top 100. Today, that number has more than quintupled, with 42 Chinese institutions now ranking among the world’s best, surpassing the 36 American and four British universities in the list.

Among these institutions, the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has emerged as a formidable research hub. It now ranks second worldwide, boasting a total of 2,585 high-impact research papers and a contribution share of 835.02. Similarly, Zhejiang University, Peking University, and Tsinghua University have cemented their positions as leaders in the global academic arena, producing groundbreaking research in fields ranging from quantum computing to renewable energy.

A closer look at the Nature Index data reveals that China’s dominance is particularly pronounced in chemistry, physical sciences, and earth and environmental sciences. In chemistry alone, Chinese universities occupy all 10 top spots, a staggering feat that reflects the country’s commitment to fundamental research. Similarly, in physical sciences, eight of the top 10institutions are Chinese, signaling a shift in global research priorities.

While the United States continues to lead in biomedical and translational research, China is rapidly closing the gap. Institutions such as Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences are making significant inroads into biotechnology, genetics, and pharmaceutical sciences, fields traditionally dominated by Western universities. The contrast in research emphasis—China’s focus on engineering and applied sciences versus the West’s strength in medical research—illustrates how different regions are positioning themselves for future technological supremacy.

You can see the rankings here.

This decline predated the Trump administration and has long been in the making. Funding for science in the US has been squeezed for a long time and as a result a steadily diminishing percentage of high quality research proposals are being funded. Since in research universities, tenure is often dependent on the ability to bring in research funding, this has resulted in academic researchers spending more and more time chasing after diminishing resources, leaving them frustrated and their work suffering.

This decline will undoubtedly be rapidly accelerated with the Trump gang taking a sledge hammer to academic research in the US, from drastically cutting funds to the NIH, NSF and universities, reducing the amount allowed for indirect costs, imposing ideological constraints, and throwing major roadblocks into the grant making process, all this resulting in stymying the hiring of graduate and post doctoral students, and bringing many research programs to a halt due to uncertainty about the future.

It should come as no surprise that another Nature survey found that 75% of US scientists were thinking of leaving the country to go elsewhere.

The massive changes in US research brought about by the new administration of President Donald Trump are causing many scientists in the country to rethink their lives and careers. More than 1,200 scientists who responded to a Nature poll — three-quarters of the total respondents — are considering leaving the United States following the disruptions prompted by Trump. Europe and Canada were among the top choices for relocation.

The trend was particularly pronounced among early-career researchers. Of the 690 postgraduate researchers who responded, 548 were considering leaving; 255 of 340 PhD students said the same.

Trump’s administration has slashed research funding and halted broad swathes of federally funded science, under a government-wide cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk. Tens of thousands of federal employees, including many scientists, have been fired and rehired following a court order, with threats of more mass firings to come. Immigration crackdowns and battles over academic freedom have left researchers reeling as uncertainty and disruption permeate all aspects of the US research enterprise.
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Many respondents were looking to move to countries where they already had collaborators, friends, family or familiarity with the language. “Anywhere that supports science,” wrote one respondent. Some who had moved to the United States for work planned to return to their country of origin.

But many more scientists had not planned on relocating, until Trump began gutting funding and firing researchers. “This is my home — I really love my country,” says a graduate student at a top US university who works in plant genomics and agriculture. “But a lot of my mentors have been telling me to get out, right now.”

This student lost her research support and her stipend when the Trump administration shut down funding for the US Agency for International Development. Her adviser found emergency funds to support her in the short term, but she is scrambling to apply for teaching-assistant positions — now extremely competitive — to carry her through the rest of her programme.

And targeting foreign-born scientists for harassment simply adds to the problem.

A Russian scientist from Harvard Medical School has been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to her friends and colleagues.

On Wednesday, Cora Anderson, who works with the Russian scientist Kseniia Petrova, shared the news of Petrova’s detention on Facebook, saying the Russian scientist arrived at Boston Logan international airport on 16 February from a trip to France when she was stopped by US authorities.

According to Anderson, authorities revoked Petrova’s visa and told her that she was to be deported to Russia. In response, Petrova said that she feared political persecution and was instead sent by authorities to a detention facility, Anderson said.
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Petrova’s boss, Leon Peshkin, said in an interview on Thursday that the researcher had good reason to fear being returned to Russia because she had publicly protested the Russian invasion of Ukraine in its first days, called for the impeachment of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and was arrested. She managed to flee, first to the former Soviet republic of Georgia and then to the United States, to continue her research on genomes.

Peshkin said that Petrova was a highly skilled researcher – “she is spectacular, the best I’ve ever seen in 20 years at Harvard,” – and had a visa that enabled her to work in the US and travel abroad freely. In February, however, when she was in Paris on vacation, her boss “made a huge mistake”. He asked her to pick up a box of frog embryo samples from colleagues in France and bring them back to the lab at Harvard.

The import of these samples, Peshkin said, was legal, but Petrova made some sort of paperwork mistake on the US customs declaration form and was stopped by customs officers on her return to Logan airport in Boston.

Although the legal penalty for improperly importing this non-toxic, non-hazardous frog material is simply a fine of up to $500, Peshkin said, immigration officers decided to deny Petrova re-entry to the US. When she informed the authorities of her very real fear of being jailed for protesting Putin’s war on Ukraine should she be returned to Russia, “she was transferred to Ice, into detention, to wait for an asylum hearing,” Peshkin said.

It used to be the case that the most able Chinese students used to want to come to the US for graduate and postdoctoral studies because it was considered the best place to be, and universities here used to have difficulty finding US-born students to balance things out demographically. They won’t have to worry about that soon. Chinese students, students from other countries, and even US-born students are likely to seek out opportunities in China.

These things are going to result in the US sliding further and further down the rankings.