President Biden, Don't Let the U.S.-China Science & Technology Cooperation Agreement Expire
Doing so will harm both countries with little apparent benefit to U.S. national security
In 1979, the United States and the People’s Republic of China first established diplomatic relations. The first treaty between the two countries, signed by President Carter in 1979, was called the Science and Technology (S&T) Cooperation Agreement. Article one of the agreement stated that the two countries “shall develop cooperation under this Agreement on the basis of equality, reciprocity and mutual benefit” and that the “principal objective of this Agreement is to provide broad opportunities for cooperation in scientific and technological fields of mutual interest, thereby promoting the progress of science and technology for the benefit of both countries and of mankind.”
Routinely renewed every five years since its original signing, the most recent version added amendments aimed at strengthening intellectual property protections, and was signed by President Trump in 2018. Now, unless the Biden administration acts, the agreement underlying scientific cooperation between the United States and China will expire this Sunday, August 27, 2023.
Some Republican representatives, led by Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, have urged the Administration to abandon the agreement, while Chinese officials have indicated their desire for the agreement to remain in place. Letting the agreement expire would be a critical misstep that would harm the United States national security, both by slowing scientific progress and by reducing access to information and expertise about China critical to the defense of the United States.
It is important to understand several things about the U.S.-China S&T Cooperation Agreement. These types of agreements are routine, and exist between nearly all countries doing advanced scientific research. Deborah Seligsohn, Senior Associate at the Center for Security and International Studies notes:
By themselves [the agreements] do not fund or require specific activity in any topic area; rather, they simply lay the groundwork for specific agreements under this umbrella on any topics selected through negotiations….The umbrella S&T agreement, though, is the specific prerequisite for government-to-government cooperation. All bilateral agreements in areas such as sharing health information and working together on climate change come under it.
So the umbrella agreement itself does not fund research projects or require cooperation on particular topics, and sensitive research areas could be excluded on national security grounds. It is, however, the essential prerequisite for a number of important conversations we definitely want the two governments to be having.
The next thing to understand is the degree to which cutting-edge scientific research in the United States depends on international collaboration, chiefly with China. When the Agreement first went into effect, China likely gained a larger benefit from the cooperation than the United States, but today that is no longer true. China has developed into a scientific superpower, and according to the analytics company Clarivate, has surpassed the United States in scientific publishing in respected journals. As the Wall Street Journal reports:
Chinese researchers have leapt ahead of their American counterparts in the field of energy storage, according to a 2021 U.S. government report, and Clarivate’s analysis shows China driving scientific output in other strategic areas. That includes basic science around semiconductors, where China collaborations account for 20% of papers produced in the U.S.
The article further notes:
The U.S. depends more heavily on China than China does on the U.S. in some strategic areas, according to an analysis by Clarivate of studies in respected journals shared exclusively with The Wall Street Journal. Between 2017 and 2021, U.S.-China collaborations accounted for 27% of U.S.-based scientists’ high-quality research in nanoscience, for example, but only 13% of China-based scientists’. The gap in telecommunications was even wider, with collaborations accounting for 10% of China’s output but more than 33% of the U.S.’s.
It is clear that scientific progress in the United States is significantly aided by collaboration with China. Failing to renew the S&T Cooperation Agreement would slow scientific advancement in the United States, putting the U.S. at a disadvantage and decreasing national security.
Some House Republicans who would allow the agreement to expire argue that U.S.-Chinese scientific collaborations might aid in the modernization of the Chinese military. Beyond the fact that the S&T Collaboration Agreement is meant to cover fundamental science and exclude military applications, there is another reason this should not be a major concern: specialization. As scientific progress has advanced, research techniques and equipment have gotten increasingly sophisticated and technically complex, making collaboration increasingly necessary.
For example, as noted in the New York Times Magazine, the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine produced by the Dutch Company ASML is the most advanced in the world, and is necessary for producing the most advanced semiconductor chips. The EUV machine relies on a laser which is made up of over 400,000 pieces, and the entire EUV machine has over 100,000 components of similar complexity.
As equipment has grown in its complexity and sophistication, so have the scientists. Each researcher often has a handful of things they are very knowledgeable in, a narrow expertise. They then rely on collaborators for other parts of the project. A collaborator may have a different specialty, or access to different experimental equipment crucial to answering a research question. Collaborations allow for results and discoveries that are greater than the sum of their parts, and partnerships with China make up the largest share of United States researchers’ collaborations.
Now, in recent decades, technological and intellectual property theft has helped fuel China’s economic rise. But, in part because of specialization, this type of theft has gotten harder. As economics writer Noah Smith put it recently, referring to a productivity slowdown in China in the 2010’s, “[It] probably wasn’t only due to real estate– copying foreign technology started to become more difficult as China appropriated all the easier stuff.”
Because of increased specialization in research and technology, collaboration is absolutely essential to scientific breakthroughs and advancement. The letter House Republicans sent to the Department of State urging the abandonment of the U.S.-China S&T Cooperation Agreement said “The United States must stop fueling its own destruction.” But this has gotten it backwards. By letting the agreement expire, rather than keeping it in place, the U.S. would be “fueling its own destruction” by weakening science in the United States and globally.
Finally, in addition to slowing scientific progress in the United States, the lapsing of the agreement would complicate the exchange of people and knowledge between the two countries, leaving both countries worse off, less knowledgeable of both sentiment and scientific advances in each country, and less safe. As Seligsohn notes:
Beyond government-to-government cooperation, the agreement also states that the two countries will “facilitate, as appropriate, the development of contacts and cooperation between government agencies, universities, organizations, institutions, and other entities of both countries.”
Thus, especially for China, the agreement covers not just specific government ties, but also the types of people-to-people connections and educational exchanges that Secretary of State Antony Blinken agreed to promote with his counterparts during his visit to Beijing in June. There is a real risk that any such improvements, including access to key health information and the ability to train the United States’ next generation of China experts, will be put at risk if the agreement lapses.
Key global challenges such as climate change and future pandemic prevention and mitigation can only be addressed through global collaboration between the United States and China. Scientific collaboration between the United States and China will be essential to addressing these issues. Cultural exchange and understanding are key to avoiding misunderstandings and unnecessary escalation of tensions. The expiration of the agreement will be a substantial step in the wrong direction, both for scientific cooperation and diplomatic relations. With so many pressing global problems requiring collaboration and creative problem solving, increasing suspicion and decreasing intellectual exchange between two of the world’s major powers is in no one’s best interest.
The U.S.-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement is set to expire this Sunday. The agreement requires no funding or specific areas of collaboration between the countries, but rather provides a framework. Any specific national security concerns could be addressed without abandoning the entire framework. The United States gains tremendous benefits, scientific and economic, from its participation in the treaty between the two countries. Don’t just take it from me, ask the Bloomberg editorial board. The benefits to abandoning the deal are unclear. The downsides are clear– a major disruption to scientists working in America and around the world, decreased communication and data sharing, decreased transparency, all potentially detrimental to national security. I urge the Biden Administration to extend the agreement as has been done routinely since its initiation in 1979. One of the strengths of liberal democracy is its openness. It is key to the United States’ scientific progress, appeal to talented people from around the world, and capacity for innovation. Let scientific exchange between the United States and China remain as open as reasonable national security concerns can possibly admit. Let the United States continue to be a beacon of scientific leadership for the world.
I plan on writing to my representatives and asking them to urge the Biden Administration to renew the Agreement on Science & Technology Cooperation, and if you care about science, technology, relations with China, or the world, I would ask you to do the same.