China produced roughly 14,000 peer-reviewed climate-change papers in 2023, overtaking the United States for the first time in three decades, according to a Nikkei analysis of the Elsevier Scopus database. Beijing has continued to widen the gap in 2024, underscoring its growing scientific heft in an area seen as critical to decarbonisation technologies and global policy making. The shift marks the end of America’s 30-year dominance in climate research output and comes as the Trump administration scales back federal focus on the issue. Researchers and policy analysts say China’s surge is likely to strengthen its influence in international climate negotiations and standards-setting bodies, giving it greater sway over the direction of low-carbon technology development.