A reset in research collaboration with China is needed

It is time for someone to take a contrarian, positive-sum view about the current situation regarding United States-China science and technology (S&T) cooperation and academic exchanges.

The S&T cooperation and educational and scholarly exchanges components of the US-China relationship were first consummated during the 1978-79 period as China was just re-opening to the outside world. Early exchanges were limited in number as were the numbers of Chinese students and scholars coming to the US.

Most students were graduate students and were funded by the Chinese government. Aside from Chinese nuclear weapons, few were concerned about any economic or technological threat or competition from China.

Given the prevailing state of the Chinese economy at the time and the level of technology in place in Chinese industry, China was just an afterthought other than perhaps the lingering dream of one billion potential customers. Even as Chinese leaders talked openly and explicitly about closing the technology gap with the West and eventually catching up, the prospect of a serious challenge from China seemed unlikely at a minimum.

The initial cooperative relationship in S&T was largely government-driven based on the agreement and sub-agreements signed between Beijing and Washington. They involved almost every US government department interested in reaching out to America’s new friend.

Today, the situation has changed remarkably with non-government exchanges and cooperative initiatives far exceeding government-led projects by leaps and bounds. Every major prominent US university has multiple cooperation agreements with counterpart organisations in China.

As we know, there are more than 370,000 students from China in the US (mostly self-paying undergraduates) and literally thousands of scholarly exchanges taking place between universities.

Tsinghua University became the first Chinese university to set up a joint venture campus in Seattle, working with the University of Washington and Microsoft. There are several US-affiliated joint venture universities in China, including Duke Kunshan University and NYU Shanghai.

Along with sizeable foreign investments, many prominent American multinational companies have established active research centres in China as part of their global business strategy. All in all, few could have imagined the scope and scale as well as the level of interdependence that has been achieved.

A more complex picture

These evolving developments have been accompanied by a broad range of other significant changes that literally have altered the playing field between the two countries.

A new level of complexity has emerged as what were once simple exchanges and cooperative projects have invoked major concerns in the US about national security, illegal acquisition of technology, theft of intellectual property, cyber hacking, the integrity of the US research enterprise and several other problems that have cast a cloud over the bilateral relationship in terms of these two once highly productive areas of bridge building and enhanced understanding.

The penultimate expression of rising US concerns is the US Innovation and Competition Act newly passed this summer by the US Senate. While the act itself contains many positive elements to help advance American innovation performance, it is also filled with a large number of specific anti-China provisions that reflect growing fears about a so-called rising threat from China.

Let me cite a few of the most disruptive changes that have occurred to give you a sense of why it might be time to reconfigure and restructure the cooperative bilateral relationship in S&T and education. In other words, after four decades of relying on the basic frameworks tied to the 1978-79 agreements, it is likely time to revert to cooperation 2.0 as we look to the future.

Innovation

First is the shift from China being cast as an innovation laggard to viewing China as an innovation leader. We have moved from the idea that China cannot innovate to the increasingly accepted notion that China is eating our lunch.

Today, China is #2 in terms of global research and development (R&D) spending, and if present trends continue, Chinese overall R&D spending will soon surpass that of the US. China was ranked 14th in the World Economic Forum Global Innovation Index for both 2019 and 2020 – but #1 among middle-income countries – reflecting its growing, though not yet fully realised innovation potential.

Recently, great progress has been made in deep sea, deep space, deep earth and deep blue. For the first time, Chinese astronauts stationed in their own space station, ‘Tianwen-1’, successfully landed on Mars; ‘Chang’e 4’ landed on the far side of the moon for the first time; ‘Change’e 5’ achieved extra-terrestrial object sampling and ‘the Striver’ successfully perched itself on the bottom of the Marianas Trench – the alleged deepest point in the earth’s ocean.

Science and technology capacity

Second is the shift from a highly asymmetrical, very hierarchical bilateral relationship between the US and China in science and technology to one of greater parity in terms of both capability and capacity.

As noted, Chinese R&D spending has been steadily rising – growing 15% to 20% annually over the past six to seven years. The country now possesses a sizeable high-end science and engineering talent pool and a steadily improving university system.

In 2019, the total number of R&D personnel reached 7,129,300, 1.3 times that of 2015. There are 62 person-years of R&D personnel for every 10,000 employed. And, its R&D infrastructure has been dramatically improved and modernised.

Whether looked at in terms of patent generation or authorship in top tier scientific publications, China is now a serious generator of intellectual capital rather than a simple recipient.

With the launch of its Quantum Science Satellite in 2016, nicknamed Mozi, for example, China took the lead in implementing quantum-encoded communications. Mozi is serving as a tool for the testing and development of the basic technology to make quantum communications possible. It is the only satellite currently in space that is capable of exchanging quantum-encoded messages with base stations on Earth.

From catching up to competing

Third, there has been a shift in terms of China’s focus, from basically catching up to competing, and from being reactive to becoming part of the agenda-setting, rules-making processes in international S&T affairs.

Using Professor Mike Lampton’s terminology, China is no longer simply a rule taker or even a rule breaker; it now seeks to be a rule maker. Rather than being a peripheral player in international S&T affairs, it is now one of the major countries of influence.

China has established S&T cooperation partnerships with over 150 countries and regions and executed over 100 intergovernmental agreements on S&T cooperation.

In addition, it has joined more than 200 intergovernmental international S&T cooperation and research organisations.

It has appointed more than 140 S&T diplomats for its 70 overseas offices in 47 countries. And, as of the beginning of 2018, more than 400 Chinese scientists were holding office in international S&T-related NGOs, including approximately 30 as chairman and 50 as vice-chairman.

Among the world’s 48 major cross-border big science programmes and projects, four have been initiated by China and 17 have China’s official participation.

Tech transfer

Fourth, there is the transition of China from simply being a learner and information taker to it becoming a source of technology transfer and a shaper in terms of cross-border technical standards.

According to an August 2021 article in Lawfare, China has increased its leadership roles in international standards setting bodies by 58% at the International Organization for Standardisation (ISO) between 2012 and 2020 (from 45 secretariats, including twinned secretariats, to 71) and doubled its leadership at the International Electrotechnical Commission during the same period (from six to 12).

China also far outranks the United States in terms of technical committee participation at the ISO: China is a participating member of 729 technical committees, while the United States is a participating member of 562 technical committees.

According to a 2018 review, China chaired twice as many of the International Telecommunication Union standards focus groups as the United States did.

Moreover, China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) involving 65+ countries is now as focused on S&T and education as with infrastructure projects. A recent study by the Council on Foreign Relations has concluded that the BRI’s focus has shifted to digitalisation, telecommunications and healthcare rather than building roads and stadiums.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences is playing a key role in training future scientists and engineers who will lead S&T development efforts across the BRI nations.

Brain gain

Finally (fifth), there is the transition in China from being a country with a serious ‘brain drain’ problem to a country that is now putting that into reverse – China is now attracting qualified talent back home because it is a hothouse economy where digitalisation and the ‘Internet of Things’ are taking hold much faster than most people realise.

Surely, not all best and brightest are returning, but people like Shi Yigong, president of Westlake University in Hangzhou, and others have decided to go back to China.

Moreover, China is aggressively recruiting scientific and engineering talent from all around the world. According to Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang, more than 330,000 personnel from overseas have been working in China as foreign experts.

In addition, the presence of joint venture universities and related projects has served as a magnet to attract high quality international faculty engaged in teaching and research.

The high calibre of these faculty is shaped by the fact that these joint venture universities must issue the same degrees as their US-based home institutions and these degrees must be formally accredited in the US.

A new 2.0 framework

The bottom line is that the operative conditions that were present at the time when the US and China began S&T cooperation and student or scholarly exchanges have changed in fundamental ways across a 40-year period and it is time to think about re-designing a new framework for cooperation.

This must take into account four decades of learning about what works and what does not work as well as a variety of other unresolved problems and issues we have discovered along the way.

Clearly, there are problems that require our urgent attention, especially those involving intellectual property protection, cyber security, academic access and research ethics. It is in our joint interest to arrest these problems before the current downward spiral in relations acquires even further momentum.

That said, we need to negotiate new rules of the road to guide us moving forward. Despite the bellicose, confrontational anti-China noise we hear from Washington DC and the new rhetoric about self-reliance we pick up from Beijing, the fundamental reality is that decoupling and disengagement is a bone-headed idea.

The simple fact is that there is no S&T related global problem out there – clean energy, climate change, global health, water supplies, food safety and security, etc – whose meaningful solution does not depend on a close US-China relationship in S&T and education.

In fact, the same point can be made about S&T cooperation involving China’s relations with the European Union, the United Kingdom and Japan.

By building a new 2.0 framework and set of accompanying agreements that reflect the new realities surrounding the evolving bilateral relationship, perhaps we can restore some of the trust and goodwill that has been lost and we can harness the multiplicity of actual and potential synergies that exist between China and the US.

For the first time, China’s emerging new S&T capabilities can give real meaning to the idea of ‘mutual benefit’ in key fields such as artificial intelligence, new materials, life sciences, etc.

It would be total folly for the US to walk away or impose new constraints on cooperation just when China’s scientific community and education institutions can put considerable knowledge and expertise on the table with real, substantive value for the US and the rest of the world.

It is time to awaken from our seemingly all-consuming fears of a rising China to recognise China’s emergence can be a win-win rather than a zero-sum game.

Dr Denis Simon is senior adviser to the president for China affairs at Duke University and professor of China business and technology at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, United States. Prior to returning to Duke, Simon served as executive vice-chancellor at Duke Kunshan University in China (2015-20).