China gains on U.S. in AI research, with Tsinghua University chasing Google

Chinese institutions' profile has risen sharply since 2020, conference papers show

20250109N AI sign REU

China ranked second only to the U.S. in the number of papers accepted to major artificial intelligence conferences in 2024. © Reuters

RYOKO SHIMONOYA, SHOJI YANO and AIKO MUNAKATA, Nikkei staff writers

TOKYO -- China is rapidly catching up with the U.S. in research on artificial intelligence, an analysis of papers accepted by major AI conferences suggests, as the two countries establish themselves as rival camps in the field.

Nikkei looked at about 30,000 research papers accepted by the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), the International Conference on Machine Learning, and the International Conference on Learning Representations between 2020 and 2024. Only around 20% to 30% of the tens of thousands of papers submitted to these conferences are accepted after passing peer review.

Sponsored Content

About Sponsored ContentThis content was commissioned by Nikkei's Global Business Bureau.