Based on the WoS database provided by Clarivate Analytics, the study focused on two dimensions of research scale and efficiency, and evaluated the research performance of China’s academic publications. The statistics results showed that: for China, the expansion of research scale continues in 2017, and China has maintained its second position in terms of research scale; Moreover, China’s citations and the number of high-quality output increased compared to the data of 2016. However, with respect to research efficiency, there is a noticeable gap between China and developed countries. China should focus more on the improvement of the research efficiency.