This paper reports a bibliometric analysis of the impact of research in China on cyclization, MALDI-TOF, and antibiotics, comparing this research with that in the USA, Germany, and Japan. It is shown that the productivity of the Chinese research (in terms of numbers of publications) is growing rapidly; however, this growth has not, to date, been accompanied by an analogous growth in impact (in terms of citations to the published work). A citation analysis of national and international collaboration patterns shows that collaborative research does not invariably result in a larger number of citations; in part, at least, this is shown to be due to the dominant role played by the publications of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.