The National Natural Science Foundation of China released the country's top 10 scientific advances of 2025 during the opening ceremony of the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum (ZGC Forum) Annual Conference in Beijing on Wednesday.

The list includes the Chang'e-6 mission's returned samples, which revealed for the first time the evolutionary history of the far side of the Moon and the effects of giant impacts, an innovative method for scalable production of flexible, ultra-flat diamond films, and the EAST, a large-scale scientific facility for controlled nuclear fusion, achieving steady-state operation at one hundred million degrees Celsius.

The annual selection of China's top 10 scientific advances began in 2005, said Dou Xiankang, director of the foundation.

This year's top 10 advancements were chosen from over 600 groundbreaking basic research achievements.

The 2026 ZGC Forum runs from March 25 to 29 under the theme "Full Integration Between Technological and Industrial Innovation."