POTSDAM, Germany – As scientists, we had the uneasy privilege of witnessing China’s rise earlier than most. Long before a country’s regional or global dominance shows up in macroeconomic aggregates and stock valuations, it can be inferred from the kinds of signals that scientists notice: scholarly publications, patents, talent formation, infrastructure investments, industrial coordination and the growth of capacity in strategic fields.

What many see as a sudden leap forward is really the predictable result of long-term planning and statecraft, all guided by the understanding that technological power rests on fundamental research and strong institutions. With five universities among the world’s top 40, and 35 in the top 500, Chinese institutions will almost certainly come to rival the the likes of Oxford, MIT, Harvard and Cambridge. Their entry into the global top 10 is a matter of when, not if.

China’s R&D prowess has been visible in research output, patents, Ph.D.s and critical technologies for years, even as many investors, commentators and policymakers continued to dismiss it. The “DeepSeek moment” was a case in point. The launch of a Chinese large language model with capabilities similar to those from the leading U.S. labs looked like a fluke, when in fact it was the downstream outcome of years of accumulated research capacity in China’s AI........

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