(Yicai) May 27 -- China has experienced strong growth in recent years in terms of the number of academic research publications on artificial intelligence and last year retained its spot as the global leader for the seventh consecutive year, accounting for 29 percent of all AI papers worldwide, according to a recent report.

China published 273,900 AI publications in 2024, more than four-and-a-half times the number in 2015, according to the Global AI for Science Intelligence White Paper 2025, released by the Shanghai Institute of Scientific Intelligence, Fudan University and Nature Research Intelligence, part of British academic publishing firm Springer Nature.

Between 2015 and 2024 there was a big shift in rankings in the world’s top five countries for AI publications, the report said. China first topped the world in terms of its AI research output in 2018, and by 2022 it had outstripped both the European Union and the United States combined.

The report, which crunched massive global datasets from 2015 to 2024, put a focus on “AI for Science,” which refers to AI used in scientific research and innovation, for the first time. It thoroughly analyzed the key problems and breakthrough paths of AI-powered science in seven major scientific fields that cover 28 emerging areas and nearly 90 problem areas. AI4S is becoming deeply integrated with science, with both fields pushing each other forward, it added.

When it comes to research impact, though, the US still has the upper hand. The US accounted for 42.9 percent of all citations of AI-related papers in top journals in 2024, closely followed by China with 40.2 percent, according to Nature Index data.

The gap has narrowed significantly from 2020 when the US led with 302,200 citations, double the number that China had at 144,800. This was already a huge improvement from 2015 when there were only 10,300 citations of Chinese papers. In 2021, citations from Chinese papers surpassed those from the EU for the first time.

China has also moved from being a follower in the field of AI applications to a global leader. Chinese research accounted for 41.6 percent of all citations referenced in patents, government policies and clinical trials by 2024, far more than any other country, the report said.

China and the US remain the two most important partners in AI research, despite a cooling in collaborations since 2020. Last year, they co-authored 12,200 AI papers, double the number from 2015.

Editor: Kim Taylor