China is poised to lead in research on quantum technologies. Democracies must act

Australia and its democratic partners need to act promptly to avoid conceding the lead in quantum technologies to China. ASPI’s research shows that China is either already ahead or poised to take the lead in research on several quantum technologies. Beijing could exploit this advantage for military purposes and other forms of coercion. To respond, governments, universities and companies in Australia and other technologically advanced democracies should deepen cooperation, while cutting collaboration with China and other authoritarian regimes. This twin-track process is underway, but it is not happening fast enough.

ASPI’s Critical Technology Tracker (CTT) shows that China is already the country producing the most high-impact research on quantum communication and post-quantum cryptography. China also produces the most highly cited research papers on quantum sensors, although the United States, in second place, is narrowly ahead on the H-index, which balances the quantity and quality of research. The US still leads in quantum computing, but China is catching up. This fits the pattern revealed in the CTT, with China now leading in 69 of the 74 technologies reviewed. Quantum computing is one of only five where the US currently bucks the trend.

Quantum technologies have significant for national security and the balance of military power:

• Quantum communication improves the secure transmission of information by allowing the parties to detect whether a message has been intercepted before reaching the intended recipient, which could deliver an advantage in intelligence and combat settings.
• Quantum sensors may let militaries navigate and target when other navigational tools, such as GPS, are disrupted by the enemy, as well as detecting objects that are otherwise hard to find. In an underwater context, this potentially puts the fleet of nuclear-powered submarines that Australia is acquiring at risk.
• Quantum computing could optimise many of the complex systems relevant to warfare, including by assisting in training the AI models militaries use to accelerate the tempo of operations.
• Post-quantum cryptography uses advanced versions of classical computers to make data more resistant to code-breaking by quantum computers. This matters because secure communications are essential for national and economic security.

China’s civilian research on quantum technologies is entangled with its military build-up and coercive statecraft. The Chinese institution producing the most high-impact research across the four technologies in ASPI’s CTT is the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). As detailed in ASPI’s China Defence Universities Tracker (CDUT), USTC hosts a major defence laboratory, as well as several national laboratories engaged in defence-relevant research, including three focused on quantum.

USTC is supervised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the world’s largest scientific research institution. CAS runs one of USTC’s quantum laboratories. CAS is a central pillar of China’s science and technology strategy, directed by the Chinese Communist Party, and collaborates with the military and other security agencies. Open-source reporting collated in the CDUT links Pan Jianwei, who leads USTC’s quantum science enterprise, to the development of military applications, including quantum magnetometers for detecting submarines.

The risks extend beyond China to other authoritarian regimes. ASPI revealed a dramatic increase since 2019 in research collaborations between China and Russia on critical and dual-use technologies. The two countries have reportedly jointly tested satellite-based quantum communications. Both countries are also harvesting sensitive data from around the world that they hope to decrypt using quantum computers once the devices are sufficiently mature.

The US has responded with sanctions, export controls and the partial decoupling of risky research collaborations. For example, in 2024, the US Department of Commerce listed USTC as an entity attempting to acquire US-origin items to advance China’s quantum technology capabilities, which had ‘serious ramifications for US national security given the military applications of quantum technologies.’

Australia has also tightened oversight of what is being shared with China. In August, Foreign Minister Penny Wong instructed the University of Queensland and the Australian National University to terminate their research partnerships with, respectively, CAS and Shandong University. While those collaborations didn’t relate to quantum research, the ‘risk-aware’ approach that Wong has advocated applies equally to quantum technologies given their dual-use potential.

Unfortunately, the implementation of restrictions on trade and research collaborations with China has been patchy. ASPI analysis conducted in 2025 showed that most democracies had been slower than the US to sever research partnerships with Chinese institutions.

As well as scrutinising their research and trade links to China, technologically advanced democracies need to cooperate more with each other. This is particularly true in quantum computing, where the stakes are arguably the highest and China is still catching up. While the research and industrial heft of the US is indispensable, partnerships between other democracies also matter.

There are welcome signs that Canberra is taking the initiative. In June this year, Australia joined Horizon Europe, the world’s largest pooled funding program for international science and innovation collaboration. Australia’s growing strategic alignment with Europe helped drive this outcome, which came soon after Canberra signed a security and defence partnership, as well as a free trade agreement, with the European Union in March. Later this year, Austrade’s mission in London will host a delegation of Australian quantum companies that are seeking access to European markets, capital and research.

Grand initiatives such as Horizon Europe are important, but smaller, bilateral collaborations with reliable strategic partners also make a difference. In July, Minister for Science Tim Ayres and his Japanese counterpart, Kimi Onoda, agreed on a bilateral memorandum of cooperation on quantum science, technology and innovation. Days later, Fujitsu, Monash University and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia’s national science agency, announced a partnership that will involve Australian researchers working on quantum systems and simulators in Japan.

Australia is also working on quantum technologies in ways that don’t show up in open-source trackers of published research. The Australian Strategic Capabilities Accelerator is already funding Australian universities and companies to deliver military capabilities using quantum technologies. The accelerator and other parts of Defence are also working with select democratic partners on quantum capabilities, including under AUKUS Pillar Two. This is important work, but it needs to be scaled up and developed into an ecosystem of researchers and institutions spanning Australia and trusted-partner democracies.

To provide a clearer picture of which countries are best at turning research into practical applications, ASPI will launch an expansion of the CTT later this month to include new methodologies for tracking patent data across more than 20 critical technologies, including quantum sensors, quantum communication, quantum computing and post-quantum cryptography. This month, ASPI will also launch the China Little Giants Tracker – a searchable database of more than 19,000 Chinese companies that Beijing is backing because it believes they can shape the next generation of critical technologies, including quantum.

As Schrodinger’s cat might appreciate, uncertainty ends when you measure for vital signs. The signal from ASPI’s research is clear: democracies need to act together, and soon, to avoid being left behind in quantum technology research.