China's academic publishing market in 2025

The State of China’s Academic Publishing Market in 2025

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Table of Contents

Introduction

If there’s one publishing ecosystem that has moved at breakneck speed over the last two decades, it’s China’s. Once seen as a closed-off, state-controlled academic backwater, the country has transformed into a publishing superpower, churning out more research papers than any other nation. The Chinese academic publishing market will have become both a global competitor and an ideological battleground, where scientific prestige, policy goals, and technological ambition collide. It’s not just about how many papers are published. It’s about who controls the narrative, who profits from the knowledge, and who gets to participate.

Today, China is still expanding its domestic publishing capabilities while wrestling with global issues: open access, citation ethics, AI authorship, and quality assurance. And as the country’s government intensifies its efforts to become a global research leader by 2035, academic publishing plays a central role—not just in disseminating knowledge, but in shaping China’s soft power footprint. Let’s examine China’s academic publishing sector’s evolution, current state, and tangled future.

The Numbers: A Publishing Giant

China’s scale is, as always, staggering. According to a UK government report based on Scopus data, Chinese researchers had already surpassed their global peers in scientific output, accounting for the largest share of publications worldwide and producing more research articles than any other country. The numbers can only get better as the years pass. We are looking at 1.5-2.5 million articles per year, more than the United States and the European Union combined. China is flexing its research muscles hard in artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and material science.

Behind these numbers is a domestic publishing infrastructure that’s grown increasingly robust. Over 7,000 academic journals are now published in China, with more than half publishing in science fields. However, international visibility is still uneven. Only a few hundred Chinese journals are indexed in the Web of Science, revealing a gap between domestic publishing productivity and global recognition.

China’s academic publishing market is also flush with funding. The country spends roughly 2.6% of its GDP on research and development, which exceeded 3.3 trillion yuan (about USD $470 billion) in 2024. Academic publishing has benefited directly, with subsidies for journal digitization, AI-enhanced editorial tools, and support for high-impact local publications. The government’s message is clear: it’s not enough to publish; China must also lead.

The State’s Grip: Incentives and Control

China’s academic publishing scene is not a free-market playground. It is heavily influenced—if not outright controlled—by the state. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees knowledge production as a pillar of national strength, which means it closely supervises what gets published, who can publish, and which topics are promoted or censored.

Universities and research institutes operate under strict guidelines tied to performance metrics such as journal impact factor and international citation counts. These metrics determine grant approvals, academic promotions, and even visa access for international conferences. A few years back, China reformed the so-called “SCI supremacy” model, discouraging an over-reliance on publishing in Western-indexed journals. Instead, it introduced its own “China Science and Technology Journal Excellence Action Plan” to boost the prestige and circulation of domestic journals.

This campaign has yielded mixed results. On one hand, it’s fueled investment into platforms like China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), which remains the world’s largest Chinese-language academic repository. On the other hand, the pressure to publish locally has led to concerns about academic insularity and stagnation, especially in the humanities and social sciences, where ideological boundaries remain tight.

Open Access in China: A Paradoxical Embrace

On the surface, China is a strong supporter of open access. The country is one of the largest contributors to open access literature in the world. More than half of Chinese research output was published in open access format. However, the type of open access China favors is very specific—often government-approved, tightly curated, and locally hosted.

This creates a paradox. While Chinese researchers publish in open access journals like PLOS ONE or Frontiers, they often face high article processing charges (APCs), which institutional funds typically cover. Meanwhile, domestic journals that are “open access” usually operate under a walled garden approach—available freely within China, but not always accessible globally, due to language barriers or licensing restrictions.

There’s also the issue of CNKI. Despite being a state-backed digital library, CNKI has drawn criticism for its restrictive access policies and exorbitant subscription fees. In 2022, it faced a major antitrust investigation for monopolistic practices. In response, China’s Ministry of Education pushed for the development of more open alternatives like AMiner and the Open Science Platform of China (OSPC), but adoption has been uneven.

The Global Citation Game

Because of its nationalist overtones, China is playing a very important role in the global academic prestige game. English-language publications still dominate the Chinese scientific hierarchy. Top researchers are encouraged to publish in Nature, Science, and The Lancet. The result? a bifurcated system in which local journals carry volume, but international journals carry clout.

And yes, gaming the system is still an issue. Citation cartels, ghost authorship, paper mills, and fraudulent peer review have all marred China’s academic publishing reputation. On the positive side, some Chinese institutions are making honest strides in cleaning up the mess. Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University have implemented robust academic integrity audits. Meanwhile, China’s national science foundation (NSFC) now requires all funded papers to declare AI use, conflicts of interest, and data transparency practices. The tide may be turning—slowly.

Technology and the Rise of AI-Driven Publishing

If any country is likely to weaponize AI in academic publishing, it’s China. AI is being deployed across editorial workflows—from plagiarism checks and automated translations to peer review support and metadata tagging. Large language models (LLMs) trained on Chinese academic corpora are being used to rewrite, summarize, and even co-author research papers.

Leading platforms like iFLYTEK and Baidu’s Wenxin are being integrated into academic publishing systems to assist with article structuring and scientific copyediting. This AI-backed infrastructure accelerates publishing workflows and compensates for the persistent shortage of qualified editors, especially in fast-growing STEM disciplines.

There are downsides, of course. Concerns about AI-authored papers, algorithmic bias, and lack of disclosure remain. A 2024 survey by the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that nearly 40% of early-career researchers had used AI tools for manuscript preparation, often without noting this in disclosures. The ethical debate is still in its infancy, but the technology is here—and it’s moving fast.

China’s International Publishing Aspirations

China is no longer content with simply contributing to global research. It wants to shape the publishing platforms themselves. Some of these new journals have begun to gain traction. At the same time, Chinese publishers are investing abroad. Frontiers China, a joint venture with Switzerland-based Frontiers Media, is thriving. Meanwhile, China Science Publishing & Media Ltd. has opened editorial offices in London and Singapore. The message is loud and clear: China wants a seat at the table—not as a guest, but as a host.

Lingering Challenges and Cultural Tensions

Despite its publishing power, China faces several systemic hurdles. One is language. English remains the lingua franca of academic publishing, and although machine translation has improved dramatically, it’s still far from perfect. Chinese authors often face additional scrutiny in peer review simply because of linguistic or cultural differences in argumentation style and structure.

Another is political censorship. Sensitive topics—Xinjiang, Taiwan, Tibet, and political theory—are practically off-limits. Even disciplines like sociology and international relations are carefully policed. For Chinese academics, the cost of publication is not just monetary—it’s ideological.

And let’s not forget generational burnout. The publish-or-perish culture in China is intense, with doctoral students often required to publish multiple papers just to graduate. A 2024 report by the China Association for Science and Technology noted a rise in academic anxiety, burnout, and research fraud, especially among early-career scholars.

Conclusion

China’s academic publishing market in 2025 is vast, powerful, and complicated. It is simultaneously a product of national ambition, technological innovation, and systemic contradiction. On one hand, China is setting new benchmarks in publication volume, AI integration, and global reach. On the other hand, it’s still dogged by credibility concerns, access limitations, and ideological restrictions.

China’s publishing future won’t be defined by how many journals it launches or how many articles it produces. It will be judged by how well it balances openness with control, quality with quantity, and global aspirations with local realities. And if current trends continue, one thing is certain: China will remain at the heart of any meaningful conversation about the future of academic publishing, for better or worse.

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