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China and Hong Kong Researchers Account for 51% of Accepted Papers at ICLR 2026
Papers with contributors from mainland China and Hong Kong accounted for over 51 percent of the 5,355 accepted submissions at the 2026 International Conference on Learning Representations in Rio de Janeiro. The figure far outpaced the United States share of just under 32 percent. The strong Chinese presence followed a dispute over NeurIPS policies that had prompted boycott calls in China.
South China Morning PostAudio version
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Chinese technology companies and researchers turned out in force at the 2026 International Conference on Learning Representations, with papers involving contributors from mainland China and Hong Kong accounting for over 51 percent of accepted submissions.
The 2026 ICLR, held in Rio de Janeiro from April 23 to 27, received about 19,000 submissions and posted an acceptance rate of 28 percent, resulting in 5,355 accepted papers. Statistics on the accepted papers were compiled from listed affiliations.
Papers with contributors from the United States accounted for just under 32 percent of those accepted. ICLR is considered one of the top conferences for AI and computational neuroscience. It is held alongside the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) and the International Conference on Machine Learning.
The strong Chinese presence at this year’s ICLR came after several major professional bodies in China urged domestic researchers to boycott NeurIPS. -sanctioned entities from taking part. The NeurIPS Foundation clarified that its policy did not include major Chinese AI companies such as Huawei Technologies.
South China Morning Post reported that while the clarification addressed some concerns, the dispute had raised questions over whether Chinese institutions would reduce participation in international AI conferences. Alibaba and ByteDance were among the Chinese tech giants that topped paper submissions at the 2026 ICLR.
Chinese technology companies and researchers turned out in force despite the preceding tensions between Beijing and Washington.
