'Those lamenting the lag in Western research risk falling into the trap set by the Chinese party-state'

Xi Jinping's regime, which wields the power of life or death over academic careers, has established the number of publications as the primary evaluation criterion, while also limiting the freedom of researchers against a backdrop of corruption, analyzes Isabelle Feng, the vice president of the Asia Centre think tank, for Le Monde.

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Sometimes, silence speaks louder than words. The latest global university ranking, which was conducted by researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands, has caused a stir in Western media outlets like the New York Times and Le Monde, which noted the meteoric rise of Chinese universities – eight of which made it into the top 10. Normally, such results spark national pride on Chinese social media and give Beijing's mouthpieces an opportunity to sing the praises of the new mantra of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC): "The East is rising, the West is declining."

Paradoxically, the Dutch ranking has become a source of ridicule among Chinese internet users, who were astonished to see that Oxford University had been beaten by Zhengzhou University. The deafening silence of the official media has revealed the regime's embarrassment; the Leiden ranking, which is based on the number of scientific publications, has mainly reminded the Chinese public of the ongoing scandals involving paper mills – operations that produce paid-for scientific articles on demand. On January 23, the National Natural Science Foundation of China published a list of 46 academics sanctioned for "fraudulent behavior in the publication of scientific research." This is just the tip of the iceberg of xueshu fubai ("academic corruption") that has plagued the country's universities for three decades.

However, it would be unfair to blame Chinese researchers and scientists, who are no less competent or brilliant than their foreign peers, for causing such a calamity. Scientific fraud and the pressure to "publish or perish" exist everywhere, but the pressure has reached another level in the People's Republic of China (PRC), where the sole party, which holds absolute sway over academic careers, has made the number of publications the primary evaluation criterion – even for high school teachers. It is hardly surprising that the PRC overtook the US as early as 2017 in the ranking of scientific publications. Despite the regime's constant promise of "zero tolerance" toward xueshu fubai, Beijing has let paper mills prosper. Many CPC officials caught up in anti-corruption campaigns have been found with fake degrees and doctored publications on their résumés.

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Hindawi, a publisher of nearly 400 open-access journals, retracted more than 9,600 articles that year for fraudulent practices, 8,200 of which had Chinese authors. The journal Nature also revealed that more than 17,000 articles by Chinese authors were withdrawn between 2021 and 2023 – a record in the history of scientific publishing.

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Already starting in 2017, the CPC forced prestigious publishers, including Cambridge University Press and Springer Nature, to censor certain "sensitive" articles. The regime's power to intimidate goes hand in hand with the depth of its pockets. For example, Chinese authors paid $650 million [€551 million] in APCs [article processing charges] in 2022 – enough to buy up entire special issues at Hindawi, where 65% of authors lived in the PRC. Ironically, it was by establishing itself in the booming Chinese market that the American publisher Wiley acquired the Egyptian company Hindawi in 2021 for $298 million – only to shut it down two years later.

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Those who are fascinated by China's remarkable technological catch-up lament the lag in Western research that risks falling into the trap set by the party-state. As the ancient Chinese General Sun Tzu [6th century BCE] wrote in The Art of War, the greatest victory is to make your opponent believe they are already defeated. The apparent technological superiority touted by the regime is the result of the collective work of its scientists, but above all, the product of the CPC's absolute power to allocate budgets as it wishes to industries it deems "strategic," with no regard for social protections or the freedoms of its citizens – including its researchers. Perhaps more telling than the Leiden ranking is the academic freedom index [...] which found that China's score under Xi Jinping fell from 0.64 in 2015 to 0.07 in 2025. Out of 179 countries surveyed, the PRC dropped to 172nd place, behind Cuba and Afghanistan.

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Chinese researchers, moreover, have seen the share of American co-authors in their international collaborations plummet from nearly 50% in 2018 to less than 30% in 2023 – a trend that worries Nature, which describes this as "bad news for everyone." Yet, according to a 2023 study led by French economist Philippe Aghion (Nobel Prize laureate of 2025), Chinese research is far more dependent on American collaborations than the reverse (source - open pdf). Time will tell whether, in isolation, the former will remain competitive and innovative. To draw upon the Chinese proverb: Only by riding a donkey can you find a horse.