According to the Scopus database, China produced 387,475 articles in 2016 and the USA 409,364, a gap of 21,889.
To be precise, there were 387,475 articles with at least one author affiliated to a Chinese university or research center and 409,364 with at least one author affiliated to an American university or research center.
So far this year there have been 346,425 articles with Chinese affiliations and 352,275 with US affiliations.
The gap is now 5,850 articles.
I think it safe to say that at some point early next year the gap will close and that China will then pull ahead of the USA.
Some caveats. A lot of those articles are just routine stuff and not very significant. For a while, the US may do better in high impact research as measured by citations. Also, US universities contribute more heads of research projects.
On the other hand, I suspect that many of the researchers listed as having American affiliations did their undergraduate degrees or secondary education in China.
And if we counted Hong Kong as part of China, then the gap would already have been closed.
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