The Growing Self-Reliance of Chinese Innovation

Abstract

U.S. policy increasingly seeks to slow China's technological rise by restricting its access to American science, on the assumption that Chinese innovation depends on U.S. science. Linking the full corpus of Chinese invention patents to the global scientific literature, we show that this dependence has fallen in recent years: the share of the China-produced science behind Chinese patents rose from 1% in 2000 to 26% in 2025, overtaking the U.S. share in 2021. As China's reliance on U.S.-produced science fades, policies restricting access fall out of alignment with the U.S.' actual strategic position.