Global tension is severing deep research ties between the US and China

Tension between the US and China is severing the deep ties which the two nations established in science research.

A robotic arm for surgery is featured at the 2023 World Robot Conference in Beijing this month. Photo: Wang Zhao/AFP

One of the most productive scientific collaborations of the 21st century is pulling apart, as deteriorating relations between the US and China lead researchers to sever ties.

The decoupling, which began in recent years with investigations into Chinese researchers in the US, has accelerated as tensions have risen between the superpowers. Now some US lawmakers are pushing to let a landmark agreement to co-operate on science and technology, signed in 1979 and renewed routinely since, expire this month.

China has built itself into a powerful engine of scientific discovery in recent decades, partly with American help, and many in Washington fear that China could gain a security and military advantage unless the US takes decisive steps to cut off co-operation in scientific research.

Many scientists warn, however, that Washington would be severing ties as China is making its greatest contributions to scientific advancements, and cutting it off risks slowing American progress in critical areas such as biotechnology, clean energy and telecommunications.

While the US remains the world’s pre-eminent science power, fundamental scientific research has grown borderless in the era of globalisation, much as business has. More than 40 per cent of America’s scientific production – measured by the number of high-quality papers that US-based scientists produce – involves co-operation with researchers abroad, according to Clarivate, a London-based data firm that tracks global scientific research.

China and the US are each other’s top partner in producing scientific research, with collaborative research between the two consistently among the most-cited papers across fields, according to an analysis of Clarivate’s data by Caroline Wagner, a professor of public policy at Ohio State University.

The US depends more heavily on China than China does on the US in some strategic areas, according to an analysis by Clarivate of studies in respected journals shared exclusively with The Wall Street Journal.

Between 2017 and 2021, US-China collaborations accounted for 27 per cent of US-based scientists’ high-quality research in nanoscience, for example, but only 13 per cent of China-based scientists’. The gap in telecommunications was even wider, with collaborations accounting for 10 per cent of China’s output but more than 33 per cent of the US’s.

More than a dozen US-based scientists interviewed by the Journal described productive collaborations with Chinese labs that provide a host of useful resources, including large teams of graduate students, massive and often unique data sets and cutting-edge equipment. Increasingly, they said, Chinese scientists are also coming up with some of the most innovative ideas and approaches to scientific problems.

Tian Xia, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, collaborated with Chinese scientists on dozens of investigations into the ways that microscopic nanoparticles can damage the human body. In a field that requires testing large numbers of particles, Chinese scientists benefit from having big and well-funded labs, in addition to fresh ideas, he said.

The targets have included an antibacterial coating commonly used on toys, make-up and cooking pans that he and other researchers discovered can cause birth defects. The researchers also found that a particle used in cancer drugs was itself harmful, which led to its being phased out.

Much of that work has stopped, and Xia has distanced himself from his China-based colleagues since the US began investigating scientists with ties to China five years ago. Meanwhile, China is pushing into new areas of nanotoxicology through research that doesn’t rely as heavily on foreign partnerships.

“We are basically left in the dust,” Xia said.

China has been growing as a scientific powerhouse in recent decades. In 2019, according to Wagner’s analysis, its researchers for the first time surpassed their US counterparts in the share of the 1 per cent most-cited papers, often known as the Nobel Prize tier.

There is no question that China’s scientific community has made big strides and now rivals the US’s in many ways. That competition has fuelled debate among US policymakers about whether unfettered scientific collaboration is giving Beijing free rein to exploit America’s cutting-edge research and the keys to undermine the US innovation advantage.

“The US is picking up on the fact that the open system that we praise and we hold as one of our key strengths is potentially also creating a decent vulnerability for us,” said Emily Weinstein from the Centre for Security and Emerging Technology, a think tank at Georgetown University.

These concerns have grown with the accelerating pace of advancements in emerging technology fields such as AI, biotech and quantum, where drawing clear distinctions between military and civilian uses is difficult.

Republican Mike Gallagher, the chairman of a congressional select committee on China, is leading a push to let the US-China Science and Technology Agreement expire. First signed shortly after the two countries established diplomatic relations, it has been renewed every five years since.

Many scientists counter calls for further decoupling by pointing to successful ways the US has worked with China.

One example is a clean-energy partnership signed in 2011 by then-president Barack Obama and China’s then-leader Hu Jintao. The agreement generated more than 300 peer-reviewed publications, 26 patent applications and 15 product launches, and boosted US-China climate co-operation that helped lay the groundwork for the Paris Agreement.

American and Chinese scientists in the partnership developed a better grasp on how to improve the quality and safety of lithium-ion batteries. The agreement expired in 2020.