Drop in China-USA International Collaboration

Following reports of withdrawal of Chinese researchers from collaboration with the United States in response to political conflict, we examined publication data among ‘big three’ players, including the European Union-28. China’s rise in global engagement has been well documented (Leydesdorff and Zhou  2005; Zhou and Leydesdorff 2006, 2008; Zhou et al. 2009; Kostoff et al.  2007; Glänzel et al.  2008; Rousseau  2008). International collaboration has been a growing share of the rise, accounting in 2019 for 24% of China’s indexed publications in Web of Science (Cao et al., 2020), and for an outsized share of citations compared to other countries (Cao et al., 2020; Wagner et al., 2015). China bested the United Kingdom to become the top collaborating country with the United States in 2015. Yet, Schüller & Schüler-Zhou (2020) claimed evidence the China and USA were ‘decoupling’ their S&T systems, which warranted a closer look.

Wagner, C. Cai, X. “Drop in China-USA International Collaboration,” ISSI Newsletter #69, April 2022.