For years, talk of China overtaking the US felt like distant speculation. But Woody Preucil at 13D Research & Strategy says that moment has already arrived—and China’s lead appears to be accelerating in 2026.
The data backing this up is staggering. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) recently analyzed 7.7 million scientific papers, isolating the top 10% by citation impact. Their verdict? China leads the world in 66 of 74 critical technologies. From advanced sensors to high-speed hypersonics, China now controls the "intellectual high ground" in nearly 90% of the fields that will define the next decade.
To be clear, the ASPI study does not automatically equate research leadership with full-spectrum technological dominance. But the overall signal is hard to ignore. Across numerous sectors, China isn’t just catching up in scientific output—it is now the global leader. And nowhere may that lead matter more than in quantum computing.
Research Power Is Becoming Industrial Power
The most important point in Preucil’s reading of the data is not just that China publishes a lot. It is that its research base increasingly lines up with national strategy and industrial scale.
China’s latest priorities are not hidden. Technology self-reliance is central to its long-range planning, and the country has built a system designed to move from lab work to manufacturing capacity with unusual speed. That matters because influence in advanced technology is not won only by inventing the best prototype. It is won by building supply chains, lowering costs, training talent, and spreading adoption across an economy.
This is where Preucil sees a crucial contrast with the United States. “The U.S. is highly focused on achieving artificial general intelligence, artificial superintelligence,” he says. “And China is really focused on diffusing artificial intelligence throughout their economy.” Those are two very different bets. One aims for the theoretical frontier. The other aims for industrial scalability.
The “Industrial Middle” Is Where China Has Pulled Ahead
Much of the Western conversation about technology competition remains fixated on a relatively narrow set of headline areas: advanced AI models, cutting-edge chips, frontier biotech. Those matter. But Preucil’s broader argument is that China has captured what some analysts call the industrial middle—the large, strategic layer of technologies that actually make modern economies run.
That includes batteries, electric vehicles, 5G infrastructure, mineral processing, and mature-node semiconductors. These are not secondary categories. They are the workhorse technologies behind electronics, communications networks, and industrial production.
On chips, for example, the public imagination is drawn to the smallest and most advanced nodes. But Preucil points out that the global economy still depends heavily on “14 nanometer, 28 nanometer, et cetera”—the mature-node chips embedded in countless everyday devices. China is already dominant there and, in his view, is using the profits and scale from that position to invest in more advanced domains where the U.S. lead is less secure.
The same pattern appears in telecom. China has deployed more than 4 million 5G base stations, compared with only a few hundred thousand in the United States. In 6G, it already holds roughly half the patents and is beginning network tests. The message is clear: the contest is not just about who invents the next platform, but who builds and controls the infrastructure everyone else must use.
Where China’s Lead Looks Hardest to Deny
Preucil is willing to acknowledge that many technology races are close and that public rankings can obscure as much as they reveal. But he also argues there are several areas where China’s lead is difficult to dispute.
Quantum communications is one. China, he says, is “the undisputed global leader in quantum communications”—the effort to build secure, effectively unhackable networks. It established a fixed quantum link between Shanghai and Beijing in 2016 and has since tested satellite-based quantum communications with Russia and South Africa. The strategic ambition is larger than secure messaging: a global satellite network that could eventually be extended to BRICS countries.
Exascale supercomputing is another area of strength. China built at least three exascale systems starting in 2021, according to Preucil, and did so with 14-nanometer chips it can produce domestically. That matters because it reduces dependence on Western technology in one of the core engines of AI, simulation, and military research.
Then there is nuclear energy. China can build nuclear plants “four to six times cheaper” than Western counterparts and do so roughly 50% faster, Preucil says. In advanced reactor design, especially fourth-generation systems, that creates more than an energy advantage. It creates long-duration geopolitical leverage. A country that finances, builds, fuels, and services a nuclear plant is not making a short-term sale. It is establishing what Preucil calls “century long relationships.”
The Military Implications Are Immediate
Preucil’s argument is not only economic. It is strategic in the hard-power sense. Technologies such as drones, hypersonic missiles, secure communications, and quantum systems do not sit neatly inside civilian or military categories. They are dual-use by nature.
China’s advances in low-cost drone engines, for instance, could support cheap long-range drone swarms. Its progress in hypersonic missiles carries even more obvious consequences. These weapons can travel at five to 20 times the speed of sound and, unlike traditional ballistic missiles, maneuver in flight. “The two primary advantages that hypersonic missiles offer over traditional ballistic missiles is speed and maneuverability,” Preucil says. That combination makes them far harder to intercept and gives them outsized importance in any future conflict.
He also frames quantum computing in unusually stark terms. Once commercially useful, large-scale quantum systems would not just be another breakthrough in processing power. They could become an intelligence weapon of extraordinary significance. If a cryptographically relevant quantum computer can break today’s encryption standards, vast stores of financial data, private communications, and state secrets could become readable.
“The first nation or company that can achieve powerful quantum computing,” Preucil says, “has the potential to use a very decisive tool of warfare.” He goes even further: it could become “more powerful than an aircraft carrier.”
That may sound hyperbolic until one considers the scale of the transition now underway. Governments and companies are already preparing for a long IT infrastructure upgrade to post-quantum security standards. The question is not whether the threat is real, but when it becomes urgent.
America Is Waking Up—But Late
Preucil does not describe the United States as helpless. He notes that Washington is beginning to respond, especially in quantum technology. DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is one example: a serious attempt to evaluate which technical approaches can scale, survive error-correction demands, and become manufacturable. Recent moves by the Pentagon and Congress also suggest quantum is becoming a national-security priority rather than a distant science project.
Still, the underlying message of his analysis is not reassuring. The United States retains important strengths, especially in a handful of frontier domains. But the broader terrain has shifted. China has spent years building capabilities across research, manufacturing, infrastructure, and deployment at the same time. That breadth is what makes its lead so consequential.
The real lesson in Preucil’s argument is that technology competition is no longer about isolated inventions. It is about whole systems: universities, factories, supply chains, standards, capital, military doctrine, and international partnerships. China understood that early. The West, for too long, treated innovation as a narrower contest.
“All technology is a double-edged sword,” Preucil says. “It can be used for good and it can be used for evil.” That is true enough. But the sharper point is this: whoever builds the edge first will shape the world the rest of us have to live in.
Comments
Log in or sign up to join the conversation.