There is increasing evidence that citations to Chinese research are rising sharply. A variety of explanations have been explored in previous studies. This research aims to explore another potential explanation – whether there exists a “clubbing” effect in China’s surge in research citations, in which a higher rate of internal citing takes place among Chinese most influential researchers. Focusing on the most highly cited research articles in nanotechnology, we found that a larger proportion of Chinese nanotechnology research citations are localized within individual, institutional and national boundaries. Both descriptive and statistical tests suggest that highly cited Chinese papers are more likely than similar US papers to be cited by works from China and from the same institution or authors within the their own country. Tentative explanations and policy implications are discussed.