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Serious cooperation between US and Chinese scientists is getting more difficult as geopolitical tensions increase. But with a deliberate strategy the two countries can realize massive potential gains.
For those of us engaged in international scientific collaboration, today's geopolitics are starting to rhyme with history. In the 1960s, US and Soviet scientists sought new ways to collaborate despite deteriorating political relationships. These opportunities required navigating real and imaginary national security concerns. In the 1980s, it was Japan that offered a myriad of opportunities for cooperation with US universities, at a time when that country's growing strength was seen as a competitive economic threat.
Today the rising power is China. While opportunities for the United States to work cooperatively with China are immense, so are the challenges as the two countries are competitors across many dimensions, encompassing both economic and national security. Still, the lessons learned from Soviet and Japanese collaboration can help shape a practical US-Chinese strategy. And what we learn working with China should shape the next frontier of international cooperation decades hence-with a rising Brazil, a resurgent Russia, and other ascendent powers.
The opportunity to collaborate with China is clear enough. Both countries are powerhouses in global high technology manufacturing: the United States produced 31% and China 21% of a global total of $1.6 trillion of high-tech products in 2016. Yet their very success economically puts them into direct competition. Scholars estimate that import competition from China eliminated 2-2.4 million US jobs between 1999 and 2011, mostly among less skilled workers.
Thanks mainly to the rise of China, the two nations also now compete in basic science, a source of future economic growth. China boosted its research and development spending by 18% per year between 2000 and 2015; today, rising from a mere margin, the country accounts for 21% of global R&D. By contrast, the United States has expanded basic research investments by a paltry 4% per year, a rate that matches the world's growth rate but keeps the US share of the global total stuck at 26%. In 2015, Chinese innovators filed almost double the number of patents filed in the United States. And in 2016, China overtook the United States in terms of total scientific publications and now leads the...