The latest supplement "2026 Nature Index - China" released by the British journal Nature shows that China continues to rank first in the Nature Index list and continues to expand its leading advantage. The Nature Index is compiled and regularly published by a subsidiary of the internationally renowned technology publishing organization Springer Nature Publishing Group, and is used to track the contribution of global research institutions in publishing research papers in 145 high-quality natural science and medical health journals. Among them, share is a key indicator of the natural index, used to measure the author's contribution to high-quality research. The latest Nature Index statistics from September 2024 to August 2025 show that China continues to expand its leading advantage and is expected to reach twice the share of the United States in the next two years. Another forecast analysis exclusively made by the "Frontiers in Science and Innovation Policy" project at the University of California, San Diego for the Nature Index shows that in the next two to three years, China may surpass the United States and become the country with the most public funding for scientific research. The supplement has released the list of China's top 100 institutions in the Nature Index. The top ten are: Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Zhejiang University, Peking University, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Nanjing University, Fudan University and Sichuan University. Compared with the 2024 Nature Index China supplement published two years ago, most of the top ten Chinese institutions have significantly improved their global rankings: the University of Science and Technology of China has risen from the fourth in 2024 to the third, Zhejiang University from the tenth to the fourth, Peking University from the ninth to the fifth, Sichuan University from the 22nd to the 12th, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences continues to rank first in the world. In addition, the supplement also focuses on the increasingly important role played by China's private sector in scientific research funding. Simon Baker, editor in chief of the Nature Index, said in a statement, "As the private sector increasingly plays a greater role in China's scientific research system, this may push the scale of China's scientific research funding to new heights and help China's scientific research output continue to rise