Science offers formula for closer relations

China has overtaken the United States as Australia's biggest partner in scientific research, despite attempts by the country's defense and security services to have Australian universities distance themselves from their Chinese partners, most of which are universities.

"Global collaboration on research is critical if we are going to solve the world's greatest challenges," a spokesperson for the University of Sydney said while commenting on a report by the Australia-China Relations Institute, or ACRI, that finds China's role of science in the country.

The University of Sydney has been collaborating with Chinese researchers since the 1960s on projects which the university says have improved the lives of countless people around the world.

"We now publish over a thousand academic articles with Chinese co-authors a year, and we have 340 academics," the spokesperson said.

One of the authors of the report, ACRI director Professor James Laurenceson, said Australia's scientific successes have long involved working with international partners. "And with the scale of scientific research undertaken in China much greater than in Australia, it is in Australia's interests to engage," he said.

"It is also difficult for China to misappropriate scientific knowledge from Australian researchers that has yet to be created and that is openly shared once it is."

When research with international partners involves sensitive technologies and projects of a security-classified nature, or is expected to yield commercially valuable intellectual property, controls exist at the national and institutional levels to manage the risks.

"These controls are regularly reviewed to ensure they remain 'fit for purpose' and universities have a strong track record of compliance," Laurenceson said.

Allan Behm, head of the International and Security Affairs Program at The Australia Institute in Canberra, said Australia has spent decades on scientific cooperation with China in areas such as biological science, medicine, photovoltaics, agricultural science, and many other disciplines that could inform COVID-19 investigation and vaccine research.

Since the coronavirus pandemic first broke out, Australian and Chinese researchers have been working closely to find a vaccine.

The ACRI report said the number of Australian scientific publications involving Chinese researchers in 2019 was 16.2 percent, compared with 3.1 percent in 2005.

Research collaboration with US scientists was next at 15.5 percent, followed by the United Kingdom with 11.7 percent, Germany 5.9 percent and Canada 5 percent.

With around one in six Australian scientific publications now involving a China-affiliated researcher, Australia is more intensively engaged with China than the US, UK and Canada at around one in 10, said the report, "the Australia-China science boom".

Australia's partnership with China in scientific knowledge creation is apparent in both quantity and quality, the report said.

"Of Australian research in the top one percent of most-cited scientific publications globally, the number involving China-affiliated collaborators grew by 12.8 percent in 2018," it said.

"In contrast, the number involving collaborators from Australia's other top five research partners－the US, UK, Germany and Canada－all fell."

Across 28 subject areas indexed in Scopus, a database of peer-reviewed research, collaboration with China is most prominent in materials science, chemical engineering and energy, accounting for 39.4 percent, 35 percent and 32.2 percent of Australian publications in these areas, respectively.

Collaboration holds key

"Research collaboration with China brings risks requiring management, including those related to national security," the report said. Yet, "collaboration also brings benefits. And these benefits are now being threatened by allegations and headlines not well-supported by facts", it said.

Andrew Norton, professor in the practice of higher education policy at the Australian National University in Canberra, said international collaboration was vital for Australia, as it could never compete with the vast research resources of countries such as China and the US.

He said the key is for Australia to have access to international research.

"That's the danger of being overly restrictive in our relationship with China," Norton said.

The University of Sydney spokesperson said: "Researchers in Australia and China share many aspirations; recent examples include partnerships to create healthy and livable cities, tackle food insecurity, and advance our understanding of cognitive neuroscience and brain disorders."

Despite calls from some sectors for Australia to distance itself from joint research projects with China, the government funds the Australia-China Science and Research Fund. The initiative supports strategic science, technology and innovation collaboration between Australia and China.