Are there ‘safe’ areas of research collaboration with China?

CHINA-GLOBAL

As research collaboration with China – already subject to ‘decoupling’ by the United States and more intense scrutiny by European countries – becomes even more precarious, academics and experts are looking at possible ‘safe’ areas of research where collaborations can continue amid geopolitical tensions.

In the United States, a sweeping new bill introduced by Senator Josh Hawley, baldly titled Decoupling America’s Artificial Intelligence Capabilities from China Act, is an indication of what could come.

If enacted, it would ban imports of artificial intelligence (AI) technology and intellectual property developed in China and bar exports of US AI to China. It would prohibit US companies and universities from conducting AI research in China or in cooperation with any Chinese company or university.

While experts believe the full impact of such a bill could be diluted by US tech companies before it becomes law, others note it could be “the direction of travel” in the US for a number of important research areas.

Zero-sum game

The US is “pulling back from global responsibility, and it doesn’t look like this will change,” said Nis Grünberg, lead analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), a Berlin-based think tank.

In the US, “the entire China debate has shifted towards a more hawkish and a more securitised tone,” Grünberg told University World News. “It makes it more a zero-sum game about global leadership and dominance [in technology], and that’s all in flux,” said Grünberg.

“If you have the leadership dominance mindset, there is no safe area [for collaboration with China]. But of course, that’s a very Cold War mentality.

“Foundational science is never safe from anything that can end up in dual-use,” said Grünberg, referring to dual civilian-military use, which is the target of many restrictions on research collaboration and technology transfer.

“But it’s also where the long-term benefits for both sides are immeasurable. So, that [type of research] should still be possible. The benefits are just too large to ignore. The cost of not doing it is also too large,” said Grünberg.

He pointed to global health and the environment as “shared issues that are so important that we need to collaborate, even though there might be a patent or a dual-use application that is lurking somewhere down the line.

“When you take this view on research collaboration, there are certain areas that are perhaps not entirely safe but are necessary and not as prone to security issues as others.”

Europe and competition with China

In Europe, concern about research with China revolves around ethics, safety, regulations, and control. Researchers also fear it could become more difficult to secure EU or other research funding for collaborative research, as competition with China in economic and trade areas is heightened.

In Europe the debate about security “is not as intense”, according to Grünberg. “The main, tricky thing for the European Union is the ethical dimension, because we [in the EU] have stricter guidelines and boundaries than anyone else.”

He pointed to strict rules, for example, about where medical data comes from, who can use individual patients’ health data, and how such data is used, that could affect research collaboration with China.

China also has strict restrictions on data transfer abroad, though some university research is treated more leniently.

“It’s really tricky to navigate when you have two partners that each have very different boundaries set around these limitations,” Grünberg said. Research collaboration needs to be safe for the individual researcher in terms of Chinese regulation, “so that they don’t step over the boundaries or rules from the Chinese side”.

It has become more important than ever for research collaboration to be guided by specific principles.

“Compliance and due diligence with regulatory requirements should be principled,” but also within EU boundaries for acceptable research, said Grünberg.

“This is a task that needs to be taken very seriously now, because it is also about the safety of our research here [in Europe]. Transparency is really beneficial for both sides, exactly because of this deteriorating mutual trust.”

Identifying ‘safe’ zones

Despite the difficulties, some sinologists and those who have had research collaborations with China in the past and have built up significant trust believe that as whole areas of collaboration are shut down due to dual-use and other security fears, real or imagined, others could be demarcated ‘safe zones’.

Favourites for this are climate change and environmental research, where China has its own strengths, and ‘global challenges’ such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In October 2024, Patrick Cramer, president of Germany’s Max Planck Society, met with Hou Jianguo, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Berlin, acknowledging that “despite all successes, our collaboration has become more challenging due to geopolitical restraints”.

He pointed to areas such as biodiversity and climate protection, as well as fundamental research in physics, as areas where collaboration could continue.

“Many of the global challenges we face, we can only address by working together,” Cramer said.

Grünberg said climate science was an area in which “China has excellent people. It has excellent data. China has very, very long climate records, and so it’s an obvious partner.

“It’s a huge country, and one of the countries most affected by climate change, so they do intense and serious research on this.”

He also pointed to fundamental science related to climate, such as atmosphere science and clouds, but also decarbonisation, an area in which “China has pulled off what Europe has been talking about for decades”.

With a likely decimation of US climate research funding under US President Donald Trump, due to his administration’s general stance denying climate change, some predict the ‘centre of gravity’ of climate research will shift to Europe and Canada, paving the way for what some regard as ‘safe’ science collaboration with China.

Global challenges

Global challenges are another area of collaboration seen as relatively safe from geopolitical tensions. This area includes health, biodiversity, research on natural disasters and disaster mitigation, food security, and other areas.

Thomas Schneider, director of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), a group of 60 research-intensive universities in North and South America and the Asia Pacific, told University World News: “I believe it’s crucial to maintain open communication and work on these big problems that are common problems of humanity and where there seems to be less conflict and more consensus.”

APRU includes a number of Chinese universities among its membership. “Trust is key to collaboration, and without communication, distrust takes over,” Schneider said. Some areas of collaboration he pointed to include biodiversity, education as a topic, and health.

Universities with traditionally large collaborations with China acknowledge the landscape has shifted but believe that within the new confines are areas of relative calm.

Laurie Pearcey, adviser to the president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s branch campus in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, acknowledged the fissures but also pointed to common areas.

“While we might not be working [together] in more traditional areas in the way that we used to, Sustainable Development Goals have become a real tool to anchor conversations around collaborations globally.”

He pointed to the 17 SDGs agreed upon by “governments of all stripes, all political persuasions, around the world, around which universities can mobilise their research and their learning and teaching”.

SDGs have “become a really powerful menu for universities to talk about collaborations,” according to Pearcey. “Not every [SDG area] will suit every single university because they have their own specialisations and different disciplinary mixes and national contexts.

“But by and large, there’s something in the SDGs that everyone can get behind. It’s something that can transcend geopolitical changes.”

The limits of segmentation

But not everyone agrees that this is the way to go.

“One challenge is the illusion that you can segment those things, such as climate. This is the Chinese playbook, which says: ‘in climate, we all need to cooperate’,” according to Europe-China expert Ralph Weber, associate professor for European global studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

The EU has attempted to compartmentalise sectors with its formula for relations with China as a “partner for cooperation, an economic competitor and systemic rival”, he said.

“We’re seeing the collapse of that formula, because that segmenting is under so much pressure now,” Weber told University World News, adding that in Brussels, but also in important EU countries such as Germany, “the rivalry element is dominating the other two”.

“Segmentation has its limits,” he noted. “China – like the US and other countries – will weaponise climate the first moment it can … seeing some gain in some other field that is military, or that is more in the competitor-rivalry realm.”

Others note that environmental research and climate may no longer be a ‘safe’ zone as trade barriers to such technologies rise.

“While environmental research may be viewed as a relatively safe area for collaboration compared to more politically sensitive topics, there are still nuances and potential tensions around commercial interests and technology transfer that need to be navigated carefully,” according to Miguel Antonio Lim, senior lecturer in education and development at the University of Manchester, UK.

“The overall sentiment seems to be that global problems require global solutions, but the details of any specific collaboration would need to be examined,” he said.

Economic security

Lim and others believe economic security is becoming more dominant in the research security debate.

“From an industrial perspective, Europe realises there’s commercial value to having proprietary environmental technology, and there’s awareness that Chinese expertise, for instance [in areas] like solar energy and energy storage, is more advanced.”

Even on the environment, “people are hoarding information because of data security and the feeling that the other side will steal the other partner’s knowledge. And obviously there are political issues, social science issues, or historical issues [competing visions of history] which can be potentially controversial,” Lim said.

This works both ways, eating into the overall atmosphere of distrust. “We always hear about China stealing technology from the US, but I think the Chinese are rightfully concerned that it also happens the other way around,” said Grünberg.

“An argument frequently heard in China is that it is doing pretty well, and might not need the world as much as before,” Grünberg said. But he sees the argument that China wants to turn in on itself as overstated and that scientists themselves value open collaboration.

“It doesn’t help to demonise Chinese researchers. The vast majority are, in principle, interested in scientific progress, because that’s how [their performance is] measured.”

“They want to get published in good journals, get patents, and get technology. So, they are interested in a very transparent and open research environment globally where they can be present and can leverage their findings.”