Data on China’s PhD Completions Related to Cyber Security

This 2017 ACCS briefing paper analyses available public data on the main subjects of completed PhD dissertations in China to determine trends in completions on the separate subjects of cyber security, information security, quantum communications/quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. It has been prepared in support of a research project led by Professor Greg Austin on cyber security education at the Australian Centre for Cyber Security (ACCS) in the University of New South Wales Canberra. The briefing paper is also related to a book on “Cyber Security in China” in publication with Springer and authored by Professor Greg Austin. This paper provides raw data only which is still being analysed. It is being published informally to provoke discussion about the possible causes of the main trend that it identifies: that between 2011 and 2017, there has been a marked downturn in PhD completions in China on key subjects relating to cybersecurity. The data comes from the China Doctoral Dissertations Full-text Database (CDFD) of the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). CNKI is a database to offer full-text articles from Chinese journals and other academic sources. The CDFD does not include all of China’s PhD completions since authors can make a choice to include their dissertation, and since staff in some instituions, like Beijing University and Tsinghua, reportedly discourage their students from submitting their dissertations to CNKI. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that the year on year trends in PhD topics from dissertations in the CDFD speaks to broader trends in topics of choice for graduate research degrees in China. Many specialists in China regard the CDFD as relatively comprehensive, and most PhD graduates regard it as a useful and practical route for a shortened publication cycle. The analysis does not seek to summarise data on all topics “related to” cyber security, but simply those identified in the “subject” category by the signature terms mentioned.