(Bloomberg, Sydney) An analysis by an Australian think tank has found that cooperation between the US and China in scientific research has continued to decline to its lowest level in 20 years. This shift could reshape the global innovation landscape, which is crucial to security and economic growth.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute's "Critical Technologies Tracker" report, released Wednesday (November 26), analyzed more than 7 million papers across 74 key areas. The results showed that only a quarter of Chinese collaborations involved US researchers, a decline from more than five years ago. The intensity of US-China cooperation, the percentage of collaborative papers in the total number of papers, has fallen back to 2005 levels.
China currently contributes nearly 40% of global scientific research papers and dominates most key technology areas. In the past, cooperation between the two largest economies has yielded many breakthroughs, covering areas such as genomics, earthquake monitoring, energy efficiency, and agricultural productivity.
The Australian report also shows that cooperation between China and US allies, including Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands, has also decreased. At the same time, Chinese researchers have deepened cooperation with countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Belarus.
Pakistan went from having virtually no cooperation with China in 2005 to becoming China's seventh most important scientific research partner in 2019. Saudi Arabia jumped from 46th place in 2005 to 8th in 2024; Belarus climbed from 41st to 20th.
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“The risk of decoupling lies not only in democracies losing access to Chinese research results, but also in their loss of the ability to lead global technological development,” said Robin, the report’s author. “To avoid this, cooperative relationships must be rebuilt under new conditions, around a trustworthy network.”
The decline in US-China research cooperation began after the US Department of Justice launched the “China Initiative” in 2018. This initiative placed such cooperation under national security review, aiming to curb intellectual property theft and technology transfer. The Biden administration canceled the China Initiative in 2022, but restrictions persisted.
The US Congress is considering reviving the China Initiative and imposing a complete ban on joint research. This would further accelerate the decoupling between the US and China.
