China’s Digital Silk Road to enahnce sci-tech innovation in One Belt, One Road initiative and fuel its military growth

China is making rapid advancements in many technologies thus narrowing its gap with western world.  One of the strategy adopted by China to fuel its innovation engine is to have international research collaborations. During the period of the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” (2011-2015), China’s international research collaboration partners grew to span 188 countries and regions around the world, enabling the country to assimilate into the global scientific community.The accelerated pace of China’s international scientific research collaboration papers from 2006 until 2015 was accompanied by a substantial increase in output of its research papers. China quadrupled its international collaboration research output to 71,000 papers in 2015 (4.4 times) from its 2006 output of 16,000 papers, becoming the world’s third most prolific academic research collaborating country.