The Belt and Road is where Chinese research collaborations are shifting

Why science is changing from the West: Implications for Beijing Nature Index, a modern-day reboot of the Silk Road, and how Chinese trade networks can help build resilience in the future

The number of papers written solely by China-based researchers in the Nature Index grew by 194% over the past five years. The implication, says Lee, is that US hegemony as the ‘go-to place’ for researchers around the world is in peril. It is another demonstration of how global science is changing from the West. International collaboration will continue to grow,” she says, but it “may be shifting to a more regionalized model”.

The BRI is often described as a modern-day reboot of the Silk Road, an ancient system of trade routes that connected China’s heartland with the eastern edge of Europe. The BRI is a bid to strengthen the resilience of China’s trade networks by building maritime fueling stations throughout the asian continent and overland to the Middle East and Africa.

The China Jinping Underground Laboratory, a powerhouse of astrophysics and chemistry in China: How Beijing will play a key role in the future

On a similar bold scale is the China Jinping Underground Laboratory, in the country’s southwestern Sichuan Province. The world’s largest and deepest underground lab is at 2,400 metres below the Jinping Mountains. There is a high performance virtual laboratory in Beijing that mimics Earth’s climate system and the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory in Sichuan, which uses an array of detectors spread across a Tibetan plateau. The High Energy Photon Source will be the first high-energy synchrotron facility to open in China.

In particle physics, for example, after a series of upgrades, BEPC became the first instrument in the world to detect a confirmed ‘tetraquark’, an exotic form of subatomic matter (M. Ablikim et al. Lett. 115, 252001; 122, 252001. In astrophysics, a burst of -ray energy captured the highest-energy burst ever detected, an event that challenges classical theories of physics. Adv. 9, eadj 2718. I believe China’s president. China is going to be a more proactive and influential player in the future according to Simon.

The country’s strength in chemistry and physical sciences have made it top of the Nature Index. But there is untapped potential in other subject areas.