The frontier is fundamental: China & the remaking of global research

Hosted by RoRI & UCL Research Innovation and Global Engagement, in partnership with NSFC–Wuhan University  Observatory for Global Fundamental Research

Speakers:

• James Wilsdon (chair), Executive Director, RoRI & Professor of Research Policy, UCL
• Geraint Rees, Vice Provost for Research, Innovation & Global Engagement, UCL
• Lin Zhang, Executive Director, NSFC–Wuhan University Observatory for Global Fundamental Research & lead author, CFRR 2026
• Yi Bu, Associate Professor, Department of Information Management, Peking University
• Lele Kang, Professor, School of Information Management, Nanjing University
• Roger Pielke Jr, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
• Heide Hackmann, Chair in Science Futures, CREST, Stellenbosch University
• Ludo Waltman, Scientific Director, CWTS, Leiden University & Co-Chair, RoRI
• Laura Ryan, Co-Director, Science Works
• Gunnar Sivertsen, Senior Visiting Fellow, RoRI

81 years after Vannevar Bush defined the terms of trade in public science, the frontier may still be endless, but it now has more than one capital.

Rapid shifts are changing our understanding of who, where and how science takes place. China is now the largest producer of fundamental research papers and, by some measures, rivals the US as a source of cited knowledge. 

The categories we use to organise and fund research – basic, fundamental, applied, translational, mission and curiosity-driven – were built for a pre-AI age, yet persist as targets of policy and measurement. 

In an April 2026 speech, President Xi positioned basic research as a bedrock of China’s national strength. Three months later, the White House OSTP published Science: A New Golden Age, which redefines discovery science as “shaped by continuous iteration between fundamental and applied work.” And throughout 2027, the Global Research Council, which brings together funding agency leaders from 100+ countries, has made “curiosity-driven research” its priority theme.

Into this moment lands the China Fundamental Research Report (CFRR): the first system-level, openly documented account of how the fastest-growing node in global science funds, organises, staffs and evaluates itself. 

We are used to seeing China’s scientific rise described from outside, in the reductive language of competition, ranking and threat. The CFRR is the most forensic analysis yet from within China of how its research system now works, led by a new generation of Chinese scholars, built on open data and methods, and candid about gaps as well as gains. 

Coordinated by the NSFC–Wuhan University Observatory for Global Fundamental Research, this landmark study (which runs to 500 pages in Chinese; 250 pages in English summary), is the product of intensive work by fourteen research teams. 

One week after its Beijing launch, join us online for this first international discussion of the CFRR, with Lin Zhang and the CFRR team, Geraint Rees, Roger Pielke Jr, Heide Hackmann, Ludo Waltman, Laura Ryan and Gunnar Sivertsen. Chaired by RoRI’s James Wilsdon, this meeting coincides with UKRI’s Curiosity Week and the Global Research Council’s European Regional Meeting in London.