East China Normal University’s Institute for Global Innovation Studies releases the 2025 rating of the top 100 global science and know-how innovation facilities on December 14, 2025. Photo: Du Qiongfang/GT
East China Normal University’s Institute for Global Innovation Studies launched its 2025 rating of top 100 global science and know-how innovation facilities on Sunday, with 20 Chinese cities making the record. Beijing breaks into the global top three for the first time, whereas Shanghai stays within the global top 10, the first-tier standing amongst global innovation hubs.
As a scientific analysis output on global science and know-how innovation facilities, the rating gives a complete analysis of 142 science and know-how innovation hubs worldwide, providing forward-looking reference for bettering global innovation governance programs.
Du Debin, director of the institute and lead creator of the report, stated that science and know-how innovation facilities are basically top-tier innovation ecosystems composed of three core components – revolutionary expertise, innovation actors and the innovation surroundings, which function an important platforms and strategic pillars for nations collaborating in global science and know-how competitors.
“As the global innovation landscape is undergoing profound restructuring, identifying trends, assessing changes, and anticipating future developments are essential foundations for building a strong science and technology nation. The ranking aims to clarify how leading innovation hubs operate and to support national and local innovation policy decision-making,” Du stated at a press briefing on Sunday.
In 2025, the global top 10 innovation hubs are the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Beijing, London, Boston, Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Seoul and Shanghai, underscoring the US and China have been standing out as the 2 dominant powers in global science and know-how innovation.
According to the report, a China-US dual-innovation-powerhouse dynamic is taking form, with competitors more and more centered on direct rivalry amongst main innovation cities. Leveraging its deep technological foundations, the US continues to take care of systemic benefits in areas such because the clustering of innovation components and the unique breakthroughs of technological innovation, whereas China is demonstrating sturdy scale benefits and a catch-up momentum on the top tier with regular progress in scientific analysis management and the clustering of innovation components.
Chinese and US cities account for six of the world’s top 10 innovation hubs, marking a brand new stage of competitors centered on direct power comparisons amongst nationwide core hub cities. Furthermore, the rivalry between the 2 nations has expanded into complete, systematic competitors spanning primary analysis, useful resource allocation, industrial growth and ecosystem building.
The analysis outcomes point out that China’s science and know-how innovation facilities current a tiered growth sample, with main cities driving progress amid each alternatives and constraints. Beijing’s first entry into the global top three, solely after the San Francisco Bay Area and New York, stands out as a key spotlight of the 2025 rating, underscoring its transition into a world-class innovation middle.
The report additionally reveals that Shanghai stays firmly within the global top 10, retaining its first-tier standing amongst global innovation hubs.
The report reveals that China’s analysis capabilities have undergone a major improve. While Beijing leads the world in each the output and impression of extremely cited analysis papers, Shanghai and Hong Kong stand out for their focus of top educational establishments, signaling China’s shift from amount to high quality management in primary analysis. China is now not merely increasing the size of its analysis, it’s rising as a key shaper of the global scientific frontier and more and more vital participant in worldwide collaboration, based on the report.
As global science and know-how innovation facilities function strategic nodes, the flexibility to domesticate and construct a number of innovation facilities with global impression is straight linked to a rustic’s capability to form its future growth, safe its industrial chains and improve worldwide competitiveness, the report stated.
Looking forward, China’s efforts to construct globally influential science and know-how innovation facilities has entered a vital stage. In the following stage, it’ll place larger emphasis on growing innovation ecosystems with global attractiveness and competitiveness, notably by breakthroughs in expertise insurance policies, analysis paradigms, worldwide collaboration, monetary assist and concrete governance capability, in a bid to advance high-level technological self-reliance and power, and safe a extra proactive place within the new global innovation panorama formed by the US-China dual-pole construction, based on the report.
Released for the fourth consecutive 12 months, the 2025 report gives a complete analysis of 142 innovation hubs worldwide throughout 5 dimensions: the global clustering capability of innovation components, global management in scientific analysis, global unique breakthroughs of technological innovation, global driving drive of industrial transformation, and global assist of the innovation surroundings.