In 2020, growth in China’s adjusted Share plummeted from an annual average of 13.1% in the previous four years to just 1.1%. By contrast, in 2020 each of the other five leading nations in the index (United States of America, Germany, UK and Japan) slowed or reversed the declines of previous years. China’s successful landing of its Mars rover Zhurong on the red planet this month marks another major scientific achievement, following on from its demonstration of long-distance quantum cryptography in 2016 and its landing a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon in 2019. DO you think that China has achieved scientific superpower?

