BEIJING — Half of the top 20 science cities are now in China, according to the Nature Index 2024 Science Cities, a supplement to Nature.

During a forum in Beijing themed on sci-tech innovation hubs and science cities, Springer Nature issued the supplement Thursday acknowledging that Beijing leads the cities. Shanghai now takes second place, pushing New York into third.

The Nature Index showed that Beijing has remained the world's top science city since 2016. Meanwhile, Chinese cities, especially provincial capitals such as Nanjing, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Hefei and Xi'an, have greatly enhanced their position as globally competitive science centers.

The Nature Index noted that many of these rapidly developing cities are playing a specialist role in key technology areas such as electric vehicles and solar energy.

According to the supplement, there is evident progress in the health sciences, an area where Chinese cities still lag behind their Western counterparts.

The Nature Index data showed that although Beijing and Shanghai have maintained a clear lead, the growth in chemistry output from some of China's smaller cities could mark them as future contenders in this field.

In physical sciences, the eastern city of Nanjing climbed above Boston and New York for the first time to reach third place.

With its continued focus on sustainability and ecological protection, China is cementing itself as a leader in Earth and environmental sciences, according to the Nature Index. Beijing, Nanjing and Guangzhou are the three leading cities in the subject.

At the forum, the Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance (CIDEG) at Tsinghua University and Springer Nature also jointly released the Global Innovation Hubs Index (GIHI) 2024.

Beijing ranks third globally in the GIHI, while the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area stands at sixth, and Shanghai has surpassed Paris and Tokyo to reach seventh place.

The global innovation hubs have strongly supported the global economic recovery, said Xue Lan, a professor at Tsinghua University, adding that Asian cities have made significant progress in innovation ecology.

These two indexes are complementary to each other in defining what makes a science city or an innovation hub, and they both indicate a clear emergence of Chinese cities in global research and innovation, said Arnout Jacobs, president of Springer Nature Greater China.

The GIHI has been released globally for the fifth consecutive year, with this year's Chinese version available online.