The US and EU have been vying for leadership of science and technology; now they are being overtaken by the People's Republic of China. The US is now leading in most input indicators, but the EU has taken the lead in important outputs. While the PRC remains behind in most indicators, its incredible progress from being underdeveloped during the Cultural Revolution to being a contender in this race is almost unprecedented. Qualitative assessment of fields of research and development, based on recent expert review studies, confirm that many Chinese labs have made rapid progress. Extrapolations from the current status and recent rates of change suggest that China will soon rival the others as a scientific superpower in many indicators. Further, a formal forecast of national publication shares can now be made, perhaps for the first time. The input to the model is a country’s share of world R&D investment. If current trends in investment continue, the US and EU are forecast to continue to decline, while the PRC is expected to near parity with them within ten years in the Science Citation Index. Some confirmation comes from other databases—China has already passed the US in Inspec and Compendex.

The paper is based on the related indexes from bibliometrical analysis of co-authored SCI papers from 2004 to 2008. The distribution of Sino-US cooperative institutions, variation of the number of co-authorship among the key institutions and the
cooperation network of cooperative institutions are emphasized. The results show the distribution and characteristics of  nstitutions from the angle of S&T cooperative institutions, to supply the government with the reference to make decision and confirm the Sino-US fundamental researches bases.