国际会议不国际（洁版和原版）

两星期前我们在国际期刊上发表了一封读者来信 international conferences must include China。

源起于一个有意思的现象，国内在很多科研领域都有长足的进步，令国际同行关注，但以欧美主持的老牌有名望、历史悠久的会议却鲜见有邀请国内的科学家作keynote或者plenary speaker的。

（尤其为甚的是，国内的国际会议请国外大佬来，科学交流之外往往还吃喝玩乐绕/捞/唠/闹/扰一圈，回去后组织会议时还是顾着自己的朋友圈，少有想到中国优秀的同行）

这个短文投稿后，编辑倒是感兴趣，建议我们提供更多的数据支持。

我们统计了更多的数据，现象极为明显，不过编辑倒拿掉了这些辛辛苦苦整理的数据，发了个压缩版的来信😭🤯🤣

洁版链接：

https://www.science.org/eprint/9IEXYJHFI3WCPKEGPKGU/full?activationRedirect=/doi/full/10.1126/science.aef5164

原版及数据：

Internationalconferences must catch up with China’s role inglobalscience

Yifang Ma1*,Yinan Shen2,Hai Rao2*

1Department of Statistics and Data Science,CollegeofScience, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, P. R. China; Email: [email protected];2Department of Biochemistry, School of Medicine, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, P. R. China;Email: [email protected]

In science and technology,China isnowclearlyawakefrom beinga“sleeping dragon”.It contributesasignificant share of papers in high-profile journals such asNature,ScienceandCell(https://www.nature.com/nature-index/research-leaders/2025/country/all/global). A recent analysisfurtherdocuments China’s rising role in leading global science, especially in international collaborations(https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2414893122). A Nature article likewise argued that governments must “wake up” to China’s scientificleadership (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03853-4). Academia, however, has been slower to respond.One place where this lag is particularly visible is the invitation culture of international conferences.

This matters because conferences are not simply venues for presentation. They are agenda-setting institutions: they shape visibility, define who is seen as a leader, accelerate collaborations, and influence which ideas circulate most quickly across a field. For historical reasons, many of the most reputable international meetings remain concentrated in North America and Western Europe. Recent empirical studies suggest that speaker representation at such meetings is often geographically uneven (https://doi.org/10.1177/21925682251340033;https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.12.25333491). Our own analysis of 39 major international conferences points to the same conclusion and makes the asymmetry more explicit (Fig. 1).

Across individual meetings, there is variation, but the overall pattern is clear (Fig. 1A). When averaged by host region, conferences held in the United States drew~65% of invited speakers from US institutions and~25% from Europe, but only 1.4% from China and~5% from the rest of Asia. Conferences hosted in Europe showed a similar distribution:~54% of invited speakers were based in Europe and~33% in the United States, while only~1% were based in China and 8.6% in the rest of Asia. By contrast, conferences hosted in China were markedly more balanced in their invited-speaker composition:~34% of speakers were based inChina,~26% in the United States, and~27% in Europe, with additional representation from elsewhere in Asia and other regions (Fig. 1B). In other words, US- and Europe-hosted meetings tend to draw heavily from their own regions with about 10% invited speakers outside of US and Europe, whereas China-hosted meetings more closely approximate the cross-regional balance that “international” conferences often claim to embody.

This pattern is not confined to a single discipline. It also appears when comparing conferences in matched research areas (Fig. 1C–E). In AI and biology, ubiquitin-related meetings, and bacteria-related immune system meetings, the geographic distribution of invited speakers follows the same broad structure: meetings hosted in China tend to include a more balanced mix of speakers from China, the United States and Europe, whereas comparable meetings hosted in the United States or Europe remain more regionally concentrated. The consistency across host regions and across matched topic areas suggests that the pattern is structural rather than anecdotal.

This lag is also not entirely new. Concerns about the visibility and advancement of Asian scientists in Western scientific institutions were already being discussed two decades ago inScience(https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.310.5748.606). Today, our conference data suggest that related patterns may still persist in the invitation culture of international meetings.

There are several plausible reasons. Conference organizers often work under time pressure and rely on trusted networks, familiar names, and existing recommendation chains. Language, cultural proximity, and uneven name recognition may also shape who comes to mind first when invitations are sent. But these factors do not change the central point: the global geography of scientific excellence has shifted, while the social infrastructure of conference invitations has not kept pace. When major sources of frontier research are underrepresented on the most visible stages, the result is not merely symbolic imbalance. It can narrow the range of methods, questions and perspectives that are showcased, slow the circulation of emerging ideas across regions, and limit opportunities for early- and mid-career researchers whose visibility depends disproportionately on invitation-based platforms.

The good news is that this is a solvable problem, and the required changes are modest. Organizers can broaden their “trusted pipeline” by explicitly asking colleagues to recommend outstanding scientists from outside the United States andWestern Europe, including China. They can also look more directly at the science itself: by scanning recent high-quality papers in leading journals and in fast-moving subfields, program committees can identify both established and emerging researchers whose work is shaping the field, rather than drawing too heavily from familiar shortlists. These are small adjustments to existing practices, but they can substantially widen who becomes visible and who is considered invite-worthy.

Institutional design also matters. Diversifying program and organizing committees across regions, institutions and career stages can reduce blind spots in speaker selection and make invitation decisions less dependent on a narrow set of networks. Hybrid or online participation, where appropriate, can further lower barriers related to travel costs, visas, caregiving and other constraints that disproportionately affect international participation (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00823-2). These measures do not require conferences to abandon standards of excellence. On the contrary, they help align conference practices with the actual distribution of scientific talent and influence.

Recognizing China’s growing scientific community in international conferences is not a geopolitical concession. It is an acknowledgment of empirical reality. Global science has changed, and the institutions that claim to represent it must change as well. If international conferences are to remain truly international—not only in name, but in intellectual composition and scientific reach—they must better reflect where leading work is being done. Openness benefits everyone.

Figure 1 | Regional composition of invited speakers at international conferences.(A)Proportions of invited speakers by institutional affiliation for individual conferences hosted in the United States, Europe, and China; each bar denotes one conference.Theconferences selected include FASEB series, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory meetings, EMBO series, Cell symposia in Europe or Asia, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory -Asia meetings, which are mostly held in 2025 or 2026 on similar topics including AI in biology, immune response, chromatin regulation and dynamics, ubiquitin biology, cancer biology etc.(B)Average speaker composition by host region.(C–E)Speaker composition in matched research areas by host locationin 2026: AI and biology (C), ubiquitin-related meetings (D), and bacteria-related immune system meetings (E).Colors denote affiliation region: United States (blue), Europe (orange), China (red), Asia*excluding China (green), and other regions (gray).

原版和洁版观点一样，但文字、图片还是有相当差别的，有品味的国内期刊可以也发一次😇🙊🍡🍧

编后注：大家以后有关注的国际会议，可以直接发给组织者，以使更多中国学者在大会上有机会充分展示及讨论自己的工作。

而不是满足于在全运会上沾沾自喜。

更希望不要把国内流行的showoff为主的报告式，带到国际会议上；那种喜欢津津有味历数自己文章、期刊，当台下听众里坐着领域奠基人时，是极其搞笑的事。🐒👀