China pulls far ahead of India in turning PhDs into domestic science

September 10, 2026 (MLN): China and India, Asia's two largest producers of US-trained STEM PhDs, have diverged sharply in translating that talent into domestic scientific output, with China now producing several times more world-class research despite both nations training researchers of comparable quality abroad.

The comparison was drawn by Atif Mian in a LinkedIn post, who argued that incorporating science into a society is a first-order determinant of development, and that China succeeded in indigenizing science in ways India did not.

According to Nature Index annual tables, China's fractional output in the top 145 natural-science journals stood at 32,122 in 2024, ahead of the United States' 22,083, while India's count for 2023 came in at just 1,494.

On Clarivate's Highly Cited Researchers list, the United States held a 37.4% share of the world total in 2025 and China 19.7%, whereas India's share, last published in 2022, was 0.3%, a level it has hovered near since data became available.

The divergence traces back to R&D investment.

World Bank data spliced with NSF and OECD figures shows China's gross domestic R&D expenditure climbed from the mid-1990s, converging with the world average, which itself has risen.

India's R&D spending, by contrast, has remained largely flat.

Atif Mian noted that China pursued an active policy of rapidly expanding domestic R&D investment and drawing scientific talent back from abroad by building the infrastructure needed to sustain research careers, while India did not pursue this to nearly the same extent.

The gap is not one of raw talent supply.

Both nations continue to send large numbers of high-quality researchers through the American system, but only one has consistently absorbed them back into a domestic research ecosystem.

Fewer scientific opportunities at home make Indian graduates less inclined to return than their Chinese peers, he said, with lasting consequences for the accumulation of scientific capacity over time.

The takeaway for the developing world, per Atif Mian, is twofold: send the best minds wherever necessary to acquire frontier science, while simultaneously investing heavily in domestic universities, labs, and commercial-scientific linkages  with the ultimate aim of indigenizing science and becoming a magnet for others to learn from.

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