China is no longer merely leading the research in major technology fields. It’s also moving towards a monopolistic position in most of them, the latest update of ASPI’s Critical Technology Tracker shows.

As wars in Ukraine and especially Iran remind us of the decisive effect of technology in combat, many of the areas in which China is strengthening its hand are directly or indirectly military. Others promise economic dominance for China – and technological dependence on it for the rest of the world.

The tech tracker continues to show the United States losing leading places in research to China in one technology after another. Comparison with the previous, 2025 update shows that European countries, too, are losing ground, though India is making remarkable advances.

The window for Western countries to reverse this trajectory is narrowing. This data shows exactly where the ground is being lost and how fast.

ASPI’s Critical Tech Tracker measures not a country’s current level in any particular technology but the intensity of its research efforts in the field, as shown by a rolling five-year count of high-impact papers the country produces. This data points to its future technological level. Papers with high impact are the 10 percent most highly cited.

In 2021 to 2025, China published the greatest number of such papers in 69 of 74 technologies covered by the tracker – in other words, in almost all the technologies. This compared with 66 fields in which it was ahead in 2020 to 2024. The three technologies in which Chinese research gained leadership had formerly been led narrowly by the US: natural language processing, genetic engineering and nuclear medicine and radiotherapy.

Monopoly risk

China’s research efforts in the latest five years pose a high risk of it gaining a monopoly in 41 technologies, according to the update of the tech tracker. Those were eight more than in 2020 to 2024 and indeed were most of the technologies in the tracker’s survey. A high rating for technology monopoly risk (TMR) is indicated by a country publishing more than three times as much high-impact research as its nearest competitor and being home to eight or more of the top 10 institutions in the relevant technology globally. The high risk-rating means that other countries will now find closing the gap to be difficult.

In the latest update of the tech tracker, China achieved high monopoly risk rating in technologies in most of the nine broad categories tracked. These are not marginal shifts; they represent the hardening of advantages that look ever harder to reverse.

In the artificial intelligence category, for example, the number of technologies led by China with a high monopoly risk rating has doubled to four, with advanced data analytics and machine learning now coming under this rating. China’s work on brain-computer interfaces has also risen to a high monopoly risk rating within the biotechnology, gene technologies and vaccines category.

Both advanced robotics and autonomous systems operation technologies have also advanced from medium to high risk of Chinese monopoly; these are within the defence, space, robotics and transportation category. Combined with strong AI capabilities, these two technologies offer great military advantage.

In information and communication technologies, China advanced to a high monopoly risk rating in the specific fields of advanced radiofrequency communication and digital twins. Within the category in advanced materials and manufacturing, China now accounts for 51.7 percent of global high-impact publications in wide and ultrawide bandgap semiconductors – the foundational technology for high-power electronics – which now carries a high monopoly risk rating.

Diverging research investment trajectories

These gains are inseparable from investment decisions made years ago. China’s share of high-impact research publication has risen across all 74 tracked technologies. According to an article this month based on OECD data, China is already projected to overtake the US in public research and development spending by 2028. That crossover is now likely to arrive earlier.

The reason is straightforward: successive US administrations (and liberal democracies across the globe) have not spent enough on research and development, with the current US administration making substantial funding cuts. The Chinese government, meanwhile, has committed billions in additional spending, explicitly targeting the technology domains where it’s already ahead. The compounding effect of sustained investment against a withdrawing competitor is not subtle. It shows up in every chart in this update of ASPI’s Critical Tech Tracker.

This heightens the significance of Australia’s negotiations to join Horizon Europe, the key European Union funding program for research and innovation. Through it, Australia can pool its funding with EU members and other countries associated with Horizon Europe. This is one of the few strong measures available to middle powers facing China as a competitor, a country with centralised, strategic and large research and development capacity.

The best that a country such as Australia can do is to build research alliances, pooled capabilities and institutional relationships that allow it to access and contribute to research it cannot generate alone. The Critical Tech Tracker identifies, with precision, which technologies demand that urgency the most.

Movers and shakers: global research leaders

Australia appears in the global top five countries for research effort in eight technologies. It has lost its top five ranking in hydrogen and ammonia for power but gains it in geoengineering and regains it in electric batteries. Only three Australian universities make the global top 10 in the 74 technologies we track: the University of New South Wales (fifth in protective cyber security technologies), the University of Tasmania (fourth in geoengineering research) and the University of Melbourne (10th in neuroprosthetics).

India is a standout performer, now ranking in the top five countries for research effort in 56 technologies (up from 50 in the last update). More significantly, India now ranks second – ahead of the US – in 16 of the 69 technologies led by China. This extends a trend we have identified in an ASPI report regarding the rise of India.

The EU, viewed as a bloc, leads in high-impact research in three of the 74 technologies, maintaining its position as one of the few economies able to break the US–China duopoly. But in this update, the EU loses its first rank in small satellites. Germany remains Europe’s strongest performer, appearing in the top five countries in 27 technologies, though this is down from 30 in the last update. Italy has strengthened its position, reaching the top five in 16 technologies (up from 14), while France in the top five for two technologies (down from four).

Among institutions in the EU, Germany’s Max Planck Society and the Netherlands’ Delft University of Technology are the strongest performers, each appearing in the global top 10 in five technologies. TU Delft maintains first place in quantum computing, whereas the Max Planck Society is ranked second in gravitational-force sensors. The United Kingdom has seen the most significant decline among established research powers, reaching the top five countries in 40 technologies, compared with 48 technologies in the last update.

South Korea continues its upward move, now ranking in the top five in 36 technologies (up from 32 in the last update). Japan, by contrast, ranks in the top five in only three technologies, down from four. A decade ago, Japan was in the top five in 10 technologies.

Singapore ranks in the top five countries in just one technology – metamaterials – but its institutional performance is exceptional for a nation of its size. Nanyang Technological University is the global leader in extended reality and appears in the global top 10 in 17 technologies, up from 14. It’s now the strongest research institution outside China. In the US, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology remains the domestic leader, but ranks in the top 10 in only eight technologies, down from 10. The Chinese Academy of Sciences holds first place in 30 technologies – an unparalleled concentration of institutional dominance.

Iran’s continued presence in the top five across eight technologies – including overtaking the US in smart materials and biofuels – is a data point that intelligence and defence communities will note carefully. Its achievement in drones was first captured in our two-decade report. Iran ranked fourth in drones, swarming and collaborative robots for high-impact research papers published between 2011 and 2015. For the past decade, and still in the latest tracker update, Iran has ranked third in air–independent propulsion for submarines. This technology enables submarines to stay fully submerged for weeks and would be valuable in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb. The Islamic Azad University in Tehran is Iran’s strongest institution in technological research.

Saudi Arabia has gained ground, now ranking in the top five in four technologies, with King Saud University ranked in the top 10 institutions in three technologies: protective cybersecurity technologies, novel antibiotics and antivirals, and supercapacitors.

Strategic implications

The Critical Tech Tracker’s 2026 update makes several things clear. China’s research leadership is no longer a trend; it’s a structural condition in most of the domains that will define military capability, economic competitiveness and technological sovereignty over the next two decades. The number of technologies where that lead is now monopolistic (41 of 74, up from 33) means that in a substantial portion of critical domains, the question is no longer how to compete, but how to avoid future technology dependency.

To learn more about how to gain access to the expanded tracker, sign up for updates here.