The city of Changchun, capital of Jilin province has been added to the Top 10 research cities in China by Nature magazine for its 2014 Index, according to the Dec 18 edition.

The city came in behind the traditional research powerhouses of Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hong Kong, in fifth place, thanks in part to provincial government policies and long-term macro-economic plan, according to the magazine and, "The city is diversifying its economy by leveraging its research base and wants to become an innovation-based economy".

On Jan 21, 2014, the provincial governor announced they would invest heavily in four new areas—photonics, chemical engineering, biochemistry and fine chemicals—and "build on research from four major research institutions".

China’s State Council announced in its report on major policy support for revitalizing Northeast China, on Aug 19, 2014 that it will provide more funding for advantageous areas including new materials, and biology, and emphasized need for research centers and laboratories there.

In its evaluation, the magazine looked at cities’ research capacity in Life Sciences, Chemistry, and Environmental and Physical Sciences and the quality of academic papers from research institutes and individuals.

It looked at the academic journal articles of four well-known Changchun institutes in the area of nanomaterials, rare earth, chemistry and physical sciences and found Jilin University, Northeast Normal University, and two Chinese Academy of Sciences institutes—Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry and Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics,accounting for more than 98 percent of the city’s weighted fractional count (WFC), an index to measure the relative contribution of each author to an article.

The city of Wuhan took the 6th place, Heifei, the 7th, Hangzhou, the 8th. Guangzhou was the 9th and Tianjin was the 10th place.

In commenting on the purpose for this particular Supplement listing, Michelle Grayson, a senior editor, said they want to "further the conversation in scientific literature", and that China ranks just behind the United States as the second largest output of articles.