US anti-China wall built around science ‘backfired’ on America: report
- US study on US-China geopolitical tensions from 2016 to 2019 finds sharp decline in Chinese usage of US science as measured by citations
The study by researchers at Boston University, the University of Pennsylvania and Claremont Graduate University, was published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private, non-profit research organisation.
It examined the impact of rising US-China geopolitical tensions from 2016 to 2019 on the mobility of students, citing research between scientists, as well as scientist productivity in both countries. Analysing public résumés and research metadata, the study likened the tensions and decoupling between the nations as “building a wall around science”.
“We document a sharp decline in Chinese usage of US science as measured by citations, but no such decline in the propensity of US scientists to cite Chinese research,” the study said.
“We find that while a decline in Chinese usage of US science does not appear to affect the average productivity of China-based researchers as measured by publications, heightened anti-Chinese sentiment in the US appears to reduce the productivity of ethnically Chinese scientists in the US by 2 to 6 per cent.”
