This paper assesses the evolution and current situation of the Chinese research system, mainly the academic research system from 1996 to 2017, using trend analysis and the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index. Despite the impressive growth of China’s knowledge capability, as measured by the number of publications in the international indexed literature over the past four decades, the country is still in a catching-up pattern with the world’s most advanced research systems, instead of being a full-fledged scientific superpower. The analysis shows that China’s publication growth has been to some extent inflated, as it was boosted by the inclusion of Chinese language journals in the international indexed literature. Therefore, this growth should be considered in a more moderate light. The competitiveness of China’s disciplinary areas appears somewhat stalled when comparing the 1996–2000 and 2013–2017 periods, during which the same STEM-related disciplinary areas were the most competitive. This finding reveals not only a specialised knowledge structure, typical of catching-up countries, but also underperforming and neglected disciplinary areas in the social sciences, humanities and health sciences from a research funding standpoint. Based on this assessment, it is recommended that policymakers and university administrators change their focus from research quantity to research visibility by allocating funding in a less concentrated way to STEM fields, while promoting collaborative initiatives that can encourage the qualifications of academics and the visibility of the knowledge they produce.

Since the emergence of global university rankings in the 2000s, East Asian universities have been recruiting academics with doctoral degrees from Western countries to strengthen their competitiveness in the global university league tables. Governments offer scholarships to support students in their overseas doctoral studies and encourage graduates to return. Although much attention is given to researchers with overseas degrees, little is known about their experiences and pre-employment academic productivity. Drawing on a nationwide survey and bibliometric data, this study examines whether and how the institutional prestige of a host university and academic supervision contribute to the academic productivity of government-funded Chinese PhD returnees during their doctoral studies. Results show that supervisors’ research support and collaboration positively affect pre-employment academic productivity. However, a university's prestige does not exert such an influence. Moreover, co-authorship with a supervisor is a crucial mechanism in the influence of supervisors’ research support on PhD students’ productivity.