Mainland China institutions accounted for 44 per cent of the top 50 contributors at the International Conference on Learning Representations held in Rio de Janeiro last month. Tsinghua University led with 332 accepted papers.
Mainland Chinese universities took the top four global spots, including Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Zhejiang University and Peking University. Hong Kong contributed 7.7 per cent of papers, and combined totals exceed half.
The United States followed at 32 per cent, led by Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Each produced roughly half as many papers as Tsinghua.
Analysis by Ukrainian computer scientist Dmytro Lopushanskyy highlighted China's strong position in AI research. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur wrote on social media that counting Hong Kong, Singapore and Chinese-American researchers makes AI research “basically a Chinese racket.”