"Last year, a team of American and Chinese researchers published an analysis of international research collaborations. Their machine-learning model identified the lead authors of nearly 6 million scientific teams to see who was actually in charge. The team found that among U.S.-China collaborations, the share of leaders who were affiliated with Chinese institutions had grown from 30 percent in 2010 to 45 percent in 2023. The researchers projected that China will pull even with the U.S. next year or in 2028 at the latest.

In the end, China’s scientific-superpower status will likely depend on the world-changing force of its discoveries. “We don’t just want papers,” Yian Yin, a professor of information science at Cornell, told me. “We want papers that turn into real theoretical insights or technologies.” Some of these can be tracked by looking at how research is cited in patent applications, but this additional diffusion can introduce its own lag of 10 years or more. Even so, China’s fast rise in the applied sciences is already obvious, Yin said. The country is in the midst of a solarpunk revolution. Thanks to its advances in chemistry and materials science, China has caught up with or surpassed the U.S. in the design and manufacture of advanced batteries, electric vehicles, and solar cells—key technologies for the 21st century."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/03/china-science-superpower/686564/

#China #USA #Science #AcademicPublishing #SuperPower #Patents #SolarPunk #Renewables

Social learning is humans' true superpower! And that's why we need to maximize social learning at meetings.

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/learning/2021/06/social-learning-is-humans-true-superpower

#social #learning #superpower #meetings #eventprofs #assnchat

please share with us your preferred super power.

mine would be mastery of every language extant, extinct, and yet to be. human language, animal language, vegetable language, mineral language, et cetera.

#poll #superpower #question

"It seems likely, then, that we are now entering a time after order, a time of enduring hegemonic crisis. Some might read this situation as a revival of the status quo ante, since, in the long sweep of modern history, the American century was exceptional for the global extent of hegemony exercised by a leading power. However, contrary to the emerging common sense, this does not imply return to a geostrategic dispute managed through “spheres of influence” — a legalistic arrangement associated with the late nineteenth century, through which colonial powers divided mostly distant territories.

There is no pact of noninterference between the United States and China; and, while both will most forcefully assert primacy over their respective regions, neither will manage to expel the other.

The world after order is giving form to a “zonal geopolitics,” in which different terms of great-power dispute will likely prevail across different geographic zones. This is a more unstable and dangerous interimperial arrangement, and it has significant implications for international governance and cooperation. Those rightly concerned with developing international institutions to protect sovereignty and constrain empire might be well-advised to focus their efforts regionally and on the formation of blocs that can compel great powers to moderate pursuit of their own particularist interests."

https://jacobin.com/2026/03/post-order-us-global-dominance/

#USA #Trump #China #Imperialism #Superpower #Geopolitics #Hegemony