US hostility holds back research gains

Collaboration between US and Chinese scientists has greatly contributed to the fight against COVID-19, but US educators say that hostility from the United States toward China will hurt such collaboration and hold back scientific achievements.

"We've seen over the last five years or so the growing hostility from the United States toward China, and it's contributing to, for instance, the closing down of scientific and academic collaborative institutions, where medicines and very important technological developments that could improve the condition of humanity have taken place," said Immanuel Ness, professor and chair of political science at Brooklyn College in New York.

He said that, as an educator, he felt "particularly concerned" that the growing hostilities are preventing many younger and seasoned Chinese academics from coming to the United States, which is "a very bad thing"."It doesn't contribute to greater levels of scientific achievement," he said.

"We need to engage in intellectual, cultural, scientific exchanges, and I've seen declines in these kinds of exchanges that appear to be rooted in some kind of competition that is not necessary when it's possible to work collaboratively.

"If we were able to work in a collaborative fashion, it would be much greater for intellectual, academic, scientific, medical and other kinds of developments and improving the life of human beings on this planet."

Mutual benefits

Keith Yamamoto, a molecular biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, said China and the US have already collaborated more on health and technology than with any other countries and in ways that appear to be mutually beneficial.

"The US and China are leading in scientific publications related to COVID-19. And despite tensions between the two governments, China and the US have been publishing proportionally even more collaborative studies after the emergency of the pandemic," said Yamamoto, who is also vice-chancellor for science policy and strategy at the university.

Around 75,000 scientific papers on COVID-19 were published in the 11 months to the end of November 2020, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's 2021 report on science, technology and innovation. The US and China were major contributors, and the highest level of collaboration was between scientists in the US and in China, said the report.

A lesson from the "grassroots effort of scientists" is "if we're going to make progress on this pandemic, we're going to have to work together, and we saw this emerging in an incredible way that I think is going to be sustained", said Yamamoto.

To expand this engagement, he called on policymakers to encourage scientific collaboration to counter all urgent and shared health challenges, and for increased US participation in health- and biotech-related multilateral organizations and agreements, such as those initiated by the World Health Organization.

"Clearly, there'll be huge benefits from US-China collaboration not only in climate but also in health, energy, food and water. So the moral and ethical imperatives for making progress are urgent, and the science and technology opportunities are huge," said Yamamoto.

He also stressed the "value of openness" in scientific and academic research, and said that in the health and biotech areas, the interactions with China should be balanced by "the realization of potential benefits, cooperation and interdependence".