Is China turning away from international research collaboration?

China’s international research collaboration rate is stalling, in part because its domestic output is growing so rapidly, according to analysts.

Data from Clarivate’s annual G20 scorecard shows that Chinese universities produced a total of 741,160 papers in 2023 – of which 147,951 (20 per cent) involved cross-border co-authorship. This was the lowest proportion of the past decade, and down from a peak of 27.4 per cent in 2018.

Jonathan Adams, chief scientist at Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), said China’s number of international collaborations was lower than might be expected, given the rapid growth of its research sector.

“That is because it’s like water pouring on to the kitchen floor – you can only soak it up so quickly. And in China’s case, it’s like the sink has overflowed and the water’s going everywhere,” he told Times Higher Education.

“There’s so much research that it’s just impossible for potential partners to soak up all of that collaboration immediately, so it’s going to take time.”

In contrast to China and Russia, the figures suggest, the rest of the world is becoming increasingly outward-facing. Clarivate found that a record 52.9 per cent of papers across the G20 involved collaborations with international partners last year.

Since 2020, China has been integrating less quickly into the global research environment and has been becoming “more internal than external”, according to Daniel Hook, chief executive of Digital Science.

“This looks to be because China is not well integrated into global research and it lacks, as others lack, the ability to collaborate at scale over distance,” he said. “It isn’t necessarily a desire to move away from China.”

Data from Digital Science shows that collaborations between the US and its main partners have plateaued in recent years, but those with China have dropped significantly since 2021.

“Research policy is affected by political policies, and trade disputes and chip wars will tend to decrease the direct collaboration between China and the US,” Dr Hook said.

“As a result, I would tend to believe that the decoupling will continue at about the same rate as it is currently taking place.”

While there has not been a collapse in US-China links, Dr Adams said, uncertainty has been created by the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, and by “security concerns becoming security constraints” in certain fields.

However, he expected collaborations between the two countries to be maintained because individual academics will always want to carry on working with leading people in their field.

“We’re not in a Cold War situation with China, and the Chinese are doing some great stuff,” he said.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com