How nations shape the scientific frontier matters for technological competition, but standard metrics, including publication counts, citations, and disruption indices, look backward and fail to distinguish between fundamentally different leadership strategies. We develop and validate two forward-looking model-based measures and apply them to tens of millions of articles since 1990. The first embeds research pathways within an evolving hypergraph of concepts and scientists to identify leadership in emerging areas--work that anticipates where the scientific crowd is heading. The second embeds evolving samples of ideas and disciplines drawn upon in past research to identify leadership in surprising new directions as unexpected combinations become routine and science reorganizes around them. China became the global leader in emerging areas roughly a decade ago, well before it led in volume, reflecting a capacity to detect and amplify nascent consensus at scale. The United States and Europe show the opposite profile: declining emergence shares but persistent leadership in prescient work, especially research bridging disciplinary boundaries. These patterns replicate across databases, attribution methods, and strategic domains, including AI, biotechnology, energy, and semiconductors. Nations lead science by reading the landscape or by reshaping it, and the institutional requirements for each strategy lie in tension. The distribution of these strategies promises to shape the global structure of technological leadership for decades.

翻译：国家如何塑造科学前沿，关乎技术竞争格局。然而，包括论文发表数量、被引次数和颠覆性指数在内的标准计量指标，均属于回顾性指标，且无法区分根本上不同的领导力策略。我们开发并验证了两种前瞻性的基于模型的度量方法，并将其应用于1990年以来数千万篇论文。第一种方法将研究路径嵌入一个不断演化的概念与科学家超图中，以识别新兴领域的领导力——即预判科研群体未来走向的研究工作。第二种方法将过去研究依赖的样本中不断演化的想法和学科融入其中，以识别出人意料的崭新方向上的领导力——即当意想不到的组合成为常态，科学围绕这些组合进行重组时。中国大约在十年前（远早于其在发表总量上领先）成为新兴领域的全球领导者，这反映了其大规模发现并放大新兴共识的能力。美国和欧洲则呈现出相反的特征：在新兴领域的份额不断下降，但在具有先见之明的工作上保持着持久的领导力，尤其是在跨学科边界的研究方面。这些模式在多个数据库、归属方法和战略领域（包括人工智能、生物技术、能源和半导体）中均得到验证。各国领导科学的方式，要么是解读现有科研版图，要么是重塑科研版图，而每种策略所需的制度条件之间存在张力。这两种策略的分布，将深刻塑造未来数十年全球技术领导力的格局。